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THE SPIRIT OF THE 
NEW PHILOSOPHY 



THE SPIRIT OF THE 
NEW PHILOSOPHY 



BY 

JOHN HERMAN RANDALL 

Author of "A New Philosophy of Life," "The Culture 

of Personality," "Humanity at the Cross-Roads," 

"The Life of Reality," "The Philosophy 

of Power," etc. 




NEW YORK 

BRENTANO'S 

PUBLISHERS 






Copyright, 1919, by 
BRENTANO'S 



-4ZZ rights reserved 



OEC 31 1919 

(yCI.A56l220 



TO 
ALL WHO LABOR ANYWHERE 

IN THE BUILDING OF THE 
NEW WORLD 



FOREWORD 

We have often been told that in the critical 
periods of history it is the soul of the people 
that really counts; that "where there is no 
vision the people perish." In this most criti- 
cal hour of the world's evolution when, in the 
turning and overturning of the very founda- 
tions of civilization, all familiar landmarks 
have been obliterated, all old ideals have been 
either dimmed or forgotten, and everything 
we once held necessary to the stability and 
progress of human life seems to be in the 
crucible, was there ever greater need for clear 
vision, and the faith and courage to translate 
the vision we see into living terms? 

It is inconceivable that the world should 
ever go back to what it was in 1914. It is im- 
possible that it should remain in its present 
disordered and chaotic state. There is only 
one way left open, — it must go forward to 
higher and better things. 

vii 



FOREWORD 

It is the law of life that nothing new ever 
comes into being in this world except through 
suffering and pain. Surely something new 
and wonderful is even now in the birth-process 
in the life of humanity, forced into being 
through all the suffering and pain that afflicts 
mankind to-day. 

Countless books by expert and able writers 
are coming constantly from the press, dealing 
with all phases of the great and complex prob- 
lems that immediately confront the world to- 
day, — political, social, economic, moral and re- 
ligious. 

In this book, the author makes no pretense 
as an expert in the solution of any of these 
specific problems. He is, rather, seeking to 
translate an old, and yet, ever new vision of 
life into living terms, to transmute an old, but 
as yet unrealized, ideal into practical inspira- 
tion for the mighty tasks before us. 

He cannot escape the deep conviction that 
greater than all other needs in men and in na- 
tions is the need of a new and transforming 
spirit, if this generation is to prove equal 
to its supreme opportunity. Of what avail 

viii 



FOREWORD 

would it be to change men, if institutions and 
systems remained the same, or to change in- 
stitutions and systems, if men remained the 
same? It is the inmost life of both institutions 
and men that must be transformed. It is the 
new spirit in all beings and all things that must 
be brought to birth. 

In his previous books, the author has dealt 
with various phases of the new philosophy of 
life, based on a living experience, that is grad- 
ually assuming more definite form and is com- 
ing to hold a vital place in many thoughtful 
minds that have outgrown the older theologies. 

In this book the spirit of the new philosophy 
is set forth as the basic spirit for the new age, 
in terms of a spiritual unity that may become 
a vital experience in the growing consciousness 
of mankind, and thus serve as the sure founda- 
tion upon which can be reared with confidence 
the superstructure of the new world. 

As he pens these lines, the sun is setting be- 
hind the distant hills that bound the waters of 
the picturesque lake, across which his gaze is 
directed. The sky is dark overhead and the 
rays of the declining sun are throwing strange 

ix 



FOREWORD 

shadows athwart the landscape. A few mo- 
ments more and the sun will have disappeared, 
and then, — darkness, the night and the quiet 
shining of the stars. But he knows full well 
that the morrow will surely bring the sun again, 
when all the darkness and the shadows will be 
dispelled. 

The world of human life is filled with 
strange shadows to-day. The sun of an age 
that is past and forever gone is surely dis- 
appearing from view. Its passing seems to 
leave the world in gloom and darkness. But 
all the shadows and the gloom are only for a 
time. We know that the rising sun of a new 
day must shortly make its appearance. Even 
now its sure approach is heralded upon the 
distant horizon. By faith, and in quiet con- 
fidence we await the coming of that new day. 

John Herman Randall. 
Belgrade Lakes, Maine. 
August 15th, 1919. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I An Age op Revolt 1 

II The Causes of Revolt 26 

III The Demand for Unity 50 

IV The Meaning of Unity 70 

V Unity Within Oneself 94 

VI Man's Unity with Nature 118 

VII Man's Unity with His Fellows . . . 140 

VIII Man's Unity with God 164 

IX The Spirit of Unity in Society . . . 190 

X Unity in Religion . . . . . .215 

XI Unity and Democracy 238 

XII The Coming World Unity 261 

XIII The Pathway of Realization .... 285 



THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW 
PHILOSOPHY 

CHAPTER I 

AN AGE OF REVOLT 

"We are living, we are dwelling 
In a grand and awful time; 
'Tis an age on ages telling, 
To be living is sublime." — Anon, 

IT is extremely difficult to characterize with 
any degree of accuracy the present age. 
The field to be considered is so vast, and the 
forces aroused and at work are so numerous 
and so complex, that any generalization is 
sure to be misleading. To many it is an age 
of splendid idealism, while to others the forces 
of materialism are clearly in the ascendency; 
to some altruism is the keynote of the age, 
while others see only rampant selfishness on 
every side; to many the age is radiant with 

1 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

hope for the future, while to others the years 
that lie before us are dark and threatening for 
all that is of most value in the life of human- 
ity. 

But whether one holds the hopeful or the 
fearful attitude, there is no question but that 
we are living in an age characterized through- 
out by widespread confusion of thought, in 
which conflicting ideals, antagonistic theories 
and contradictory opinions are struggling for 
the mastery. When even the accredited 
teachers of the race find it impossible to agree 
as to the solution of the gigantic problems con- 
fronting civilization, it is little wonder that the 
average man feels himself helpless and utterly 
lost in the intricate complexities of the present 
world situation. 

"Who indeed is sufficient for these things ?" 
is the well-nigh despairing cry that goes up 
from many a heart; while still others of more 
confident spirit are earnestly inquiring: 
"Who will show us the pathway that leads to 
the new and better future for humanity?" 
For, despite all appearances to the contrary, 
there is an instinctive feeling that the building 

2 



AN AGE OF REVOLT 

of the new world awaits no sign from the 
heavens, no influx of miraculous power from 
above, no manifestation of any supernatural 
wisdom, but only the willingness of man him- 
self to rise to the present critical emergency 
and prove himself equal to the mighty tasks 
the age has thrust upon him. 

In earlier times it was the naive belief that 
the gods who dwelt outside man, in the dis- 
tance heavens, would step in, as it were, in 
times of crises and do for him what he could 
not do for himself; it was by the aid of super- 
natural Powers that he was supposed to be 
able to solve all his knotty problems. But to- 
day, humanity has reached the point in its 
evolution where man knows, more or less 
clearly, that he holds in his own hands the 
forces by means of which he may make the 
future whatsoever he will. He is beginning 
to realize that he does not, and need not, de- 
pend on supernatural assistance from without; 
he needs only to cooperate freely and fully 
with the God who dwells within himself, and 
all things will be made possible. 

It is in this conviction, as it emerges grad- 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

ually in the consciousness of the rank and file 
of mankind, that we glimpse both the glorious 
hopes and the solemn responsibilities for the 
future. Man need wait no longer for God to 
act, as in former ages; for the simple reason 
that God is always ready to act, waiting only 
man's willingness to act with Him and through 
Him. The present moment in human history 
is indeed God's great hour, — and man's; or 
better still, it may become God's great hour 
through man, if man is only ready at last to 
live out the divinest that is in him and thus 
realize his true Selfhood here on earth. 

The one self-evident fact that stands forth 
unmistakably clear, above the universal con- 
fusion of contending minds and chaotic opin- 
ions, is that all the turmoil and strife, all the 
various expressions of force and violence that 
menace the stability of existing institutions, 
all the uncertainty that broods over the future, 
go back for their ultimate source to the spirit 
of revolt that fills the world to-day. Never 
before in human history has the revolution- 
ary spirit been so widespread that it could 
be regarded as practically universal. Con- 

4 



AN AGE OF REVOLT 

sciously or unconsciously, all men are in- 
fluenced by it, and, to a greater extent than 
many realize, all men are slowly but surely be- 
ing transformed by it. Even the most con- 
servative to-day are conservative only by com- 
parison with the radicals; their conservatism 
is far in advance of what it was yesterday, and 
it is moving steadily toward something still 
more advanced to-morrow. 

The most stereotyped and conventional 
newspapers of the country are discovered to 
have changed their opinions over night; while 
the mental and moral agility with which some 
of them alter their editorial policy, in the in- 
terpretation of current events or immediate 
problems, is highly edifying as well as often 
most amusing. In every civilized land the 
crowds are being constantly harangued to 
overthrow the existing order so that something 
better may be ushered in, while great mass- 
meetings are being just as earnestly urged to 
maintain the existing order at any cost so that 
anarchy may not engulf the world. And the 
irony of the whole situation lies in the fact that 
the only existing "order" in the world is frank 

5 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

and open disorder, and that in all countries, 
under whatever semblance of order may seem 
to exist, there is actually chaos and confusion 
worse confounded. 

Behold! a thousand voices crying to the 
multitudes, but how few that speak with any 
genuine authority; and even these few fail to 
command the hearing or the respect of any 
considerable number. If there ever was a 
time demanding the strongest and sanest lead- 
ership, it is surely to-day; but where are the 
truly commanding figures in whom the people 
have confidence and whom they will instinc- 
tively follow? 

It is by no means essential that the spirit of 
revolt should find expression in forms of 
violence, though these are its spectacular mani- 
festations that we dread the most, not realizing 
that they are the least powerful of all the 
forces of revolt and inevitably tend to recoil 
upon themselves. The most intense spirit of 
revolt often burns in the breasts of men and 
women who would never dream of lifting their 
hands in any way against their fellows. The 
most revolutionary forces in the world, now 

6 



AN AGE OF REVOLT 

and always, are ideas, convictions, enthusiasm 
for certain ideals that have become dynamic 
in the souls of men; and it is to these original 
sources that the spirit of revolt that fills the 
world to-day must ultimately be traced. For 
he utterly misreads the age who fails to see that 
the revolt characterizing the life of man to- 
day is essentially a revolt of the spirit in man 
against things-as-they-have-been in the past. 

And so if it were possible for the hand of 
authority to silence all criticism and suppress 
all objectors and repress every form of out- 
ward disorder, — a course that is fortunately 
quite impossible, — the age would still be char- 
acterized by the spirit of revolt within the 
hearts and minds of people everywhere. And, 
sooner or later, it would be bound to make 
itself heard, in spite of all methods of repres- 
sion or suppression that might be employed for 
a season. 

We have only to recall the conditions that 
prevail in the world to-day, to realize the truth 
of the foregoing statements. Politically, old 
and familiar forms of government have either 
already been swept away or else are trembling 

7 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

in the balance. Czars and Emperors, Kings 
and Queens, hereditary rulers of all types, the 
vested nobility in all lands have been swept 
into the discard by the hundreds, while plain 
men of the people, with neither birth nor 
breeding, are holding the reins of governments 
and guiding the destinies of millions toward a 
more truly democratic state. 

The nations that fought to make the world 
"safe for democracy" little knew how terribly 
unsafe they were making it for anything short 
of a genuine democracy, whose real implica- 
tions few statesmen have as yet dared to 
frankly face. Whatever else the war may 
have accomplished, one thing is daylight plain 
at last: It has unleashed the mighty forces 
of democracy that, from the beginning, have 
lain potential in the breasts of all men, to such 
a degree that no form of autocracy, no kind of 
tyranny, no sort of human oppression can ever 
again be very long-lived on this planet. 
Sooner or later, government of the people, by 
the people, and for the people must surely be 
established in all the earth. For the People 
are awake at last, and the war has made them 

8 



AN AGE OF REVOLT 

conscious as never before, not only of their 
rights, but of their power to secure those 
rights. 

For five years now, we have been making 
the constant appeal to the rank and file of all 
lands as to those upon whom depended the 
preservation of the priceless liberties of hu- 
manity; and this, regardless of whether they 
fought in the trenches or toiled in the factories. 
All the world knows how nobly they responded 
to our appeals. It should not cause any sur- 
prise that now, with the ending of the war, 
these in every nation whose devotion and 
loyalty we have both witnessed and praised, 
should expect and even demand a larger share 
in the affairs of government than has ever yet 
been actually accorded them. 

But the revolt that fills the air is not directed 
alone against old or obsolete political institu- 
tions. It finds even more intense and bitter 
expression against old and outworn social and 
economic systems that have clearly revealed 
their utter inadequacy to cope with the prob- 
lems of the new age. However clearly the 
historian and the economist have realized the 

9 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

fundamental place held by the great economic 
forces in modern civilization, the mass of men 
have had but a dim and vague perception of 
the part played by these forces, either in the 
life of nations or of individuals. The veil of 
ignorance, however, has at last been torn 
away, and men everywhere realize to-day that 
the fierce competitions, the deadly rivalries, 
the bitter frictions that breed wars between 
nations and bring hunger and want to count- 
less men, women and children in every land, 
are at bottom due to economic causes that can 
be removed or changed just as soon as nations 
and men are ready to reorganize their forces 
on a different basis and live their lives in a 
new spirit. 

The Reconstruction Program, recently put 
forth by the British Labor Party, in its wise, 
constructive and statesmanlike treatment of 
the economic problems that immediately con- 
front the world, is one of the noblest and most 
significant human documents that the world 
has yet seen. It is clear that the demands of 
intelligent labor are no longer concerned only 
with higher wages or shorter hours; they go 

10 



AN AGE OF REVOLT 

far deeper than these things. As voiced by 
labor's most representative spokesmen, they 
involve nothing less than a larger share of the 
product of labor and a larger control of the 
means of production. 

It is extremely significant that many of the 
representative employers of labor are already 
admitting publicly the justice of these primary 
demands, and through some form of profit- 
sharing or plan of co-partnership are seeking 
to bridge the gulf between the old industrial 
system and the one that is to be. That 
changes are coming in our economic systems, 
no intelligent man can doubt any longer. The 
very tenseness of the industrial situation in all 
countries is the sure sign that things cannot 
remain as they have been. This revolt against 
the injustices of the old system, so deep-seated 
and widespread, together with the awakening 
sense of justice among a steadily increasing 
number of the employing class in England and 
the United States, gives promise of hope for a 
peaceful solution of the problems involved, at 
least in the more progressive countries. 

In the realm of Religion, the same spirit of 

11 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

either active or passive revolt is increasingly in 
evidence. Long before the coming of the 
war, the drift away from the accredited 
churches had become clearly apparent, occa- 
sioning grave alarm among religious leaders in 
all countries. We are not thinking now of 
the intellectual revolt of the scholars from the 
historic institutions of religion, which became 
so marked about the middle of the nineteenth 
century and has steadily increased since that 
time. The discoveries of modern science, the 
historical criticism of the Bible, the compara- 
tive study of religions, the rise and rapid 
growth of the new social spirit, — all these ex- 
plain easily enough the scholar's natural im- 
patience with religious institutions that were 
content to jog along in the same old way with 
their eyes forever on the past, seemingly blind 
to all the new truth that had dawned upon the 
world, and unwilling to make the slightest ef- 
fort to translate the eternal element in religion 
into terms of the thought and life of the new 
day. 

Many such scholars bravely elected to re- 
main within the churches of their fathers where 

12 



AN AGE OF REVOLT 

they have continued to struggle most earnestly 
for the re-vitalizing of religion, often in the 
face of unjust criticism and even bitter per- 
secutions. It is not strange, however, that 
many more have felt themselves debarred or 
driven out of the churches by their antagonistic 
attitude toward all who would not repeat 
verbatim the old shibboleths. And these have 
felt themselves obliged to live their own re- 
ligious lives alone and apart from all churches. 
As most of these represented the finest mental 
and moral life of the age, it has meant a tre- 
mendous loss of power and leadership to the 
churches. 

It is significant, however, that during the 
last generation, the spirit of revolt in religion 
has extended to the rank and file of the people 
themselves, who, however vaguely they may 
have grasped the intellectual view-point of the 
scholars, have nevertheless, in steadily increas- 
ing numbers, become convinced of the inad- 
equacy of the existing churches to satisfy their 
religious needs. The most intelligent leaders 
in all churches have viewed with serious appre- 
hension the falling away in church attendance, 

13 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

the loss of valued members to the various new 
cults that have sprung up so rapidly, and the 
growing indifference of so many who still re- 
main nominally attached to the church. Each 
year the numerical statistics of church member- 
ship are published as the cause for self -con- 
gratulations, but the other side of the statisti- 
cal table is rarely mentioned. What of the 
nearly sixty per cent, of the people of this 
country who rarely, if ever, darken the doors 
of any church? These figures become all the 
more significant when we remember that they 
stand, in large measure, for the intelligence 
and the moral enthusiasm of the age ; and what 
is still more serious, they include the great pro- 
portion of the so-called laboring classes who 
have come to feel, as they say very frankly, 
that the church has nothing for them and is not 
interested in their problems. 

When the war first broke out, the hope was 
expressed in many quarters that it would lead 
to such a revival of interest in religion as 
would surely serve to stem the tide turning 
away from the historic institutions. But the 
war is over and the revival has not materialized 

14 



AN AGE OF REVOLT 

as yet. As a matter of fact, the result of the 
war on the churches has been to accentuate the 
spirit of criticism within and the spirit of in- 
difference or open hostility without the church. 
A careful and dispassionate survey of the 
many statements which have appeared in print 
from prominent religious leaders as to the in- 
fluence of the war on religion gives the follow- 
ing as a summary: Our dogmas of all kinds 
are at a discount, our sectarianism has been 
riddled to pieces, our particular forms and 
rites and rituals are matters of indifference, 
and the demand everywhere is for a simplifica- 
tion both of the theology and the machinery of 
ecclesiasticism. The boys who come back, we 
are told constantly, with any vital interest in 
religion, are going to demand a different kind 
of a church. 

Within the church, the war has awakened 
multitudes of people from their smug self- 
complacency and forced them to think as they 
never have thought before, with the result that 
many have frankly abandoned beliefs that 
were only nominal before, and are utterly at 
sea as to what they do believe. Others have 

15 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

come out openly against religion, repudiating 
all its institutions as having proved themselves 
bankrupt, both morally and spiritually, in the 
world's greatest crisis. And a still larger 
number are turning to New Thought, or to 
some other of the modern cults, in the wistful 
hope of finding what the regular churches have 
failed to furnish. 

A professional reader for one of the largest 
publishing houses of this country and Eng- 
land recently told the author that among the 
religious manuscripts submitted during the 
last six months, more than a score came from 
well-known clergymen of all denominations 
and that every one of them dealt with some 
phase of the religious revolt that is now on 
within the churches themselves. This is only 
one publishing house, however, and it is safe 
to assume that all publishers are receiving 
similar manuscripts by religious leaders, in 
which breathes the same spirit of revolt. 

But by far the most serious indictment of 
the churches is that they have failed the world 
in that moral and spiritual leadership which is 
their peculiar function, and of which the world 

16 



AN AGE OF REVOLT 

has stood most in need during the last few 
years. There have been, to be sure, a few 
prophetic voices, but these have been the ex- 
ception; they have been like voices crying in 
the wilderness, to which has come little re- 
sponse save that of slander and misrepre- 
sentation from their fellow churchmen. The 
Church as a whole, both Catholic and Protes- 
tant, has failed to voice clearly and unmistak- 
ably, in this critical hour for the world, the 
Gospel it professes to believe; and no amount 
of specious argument or sophistical statement 
can justify its failure to the minds of thinking 
men, or to the conscience of the common peo- 
ple. 

This is not to deny that the Church has done 
many good works and assisted most generously 
many worthy causes; but as an organization, 
it has voiced no vital, clean-cut, moral message 
for the troubled times through which humanity 
has been and is still passing. It is for this 
message that the people everywhere have been 
listening, but listening in vain. "Where 
there is no vision the people perish." And it 
has ever been the instinctive faith of men that 

17 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

the one institution in society that should be 
spiritually capable of catching the vision 
needed in times of crisis, and translating it into 
moral and living terms, is the Church. Is it 
any wonder that multitudes in all lands have 
lost faith in the leadership of the Church for 
to-day, and, as a natural result, are turning 
elsewhere for light? The Church really leads, 
not because it claims to lead, but only when it 
does actually lead. If the Church were in- 
deed leading the mighty moral and spiritual 
forces to-day, it would certainly need no apolo- 
gists. 

In the re-construction age that now lies be- 
fore us, where are the indications that the 
Churches are preparing to assume the place of 
moral leadership amid the many intricate 
problems that confront the world? Since the 
signing of the armistice, the leading denomina- 
tions have all been making extensive plans for 
huge financial campaigns, or already centering 
their machinery on the actual raising of vast 
sums of money, running up into the hundreds 
of millions, with the primary object of push- 
ing more vigorously their own denominational 

18 



AN AGE OF REVOLT 

enterprises both at home and abroad. But we 
have heard comparatively little from any of 
the great denominations, with the notable ex- 
ception of the recent program put forth by the 
Roman Catholic Church, as to any real, con- 
structive social program, or as to the part they 
propose to play in ushering in the new social 
order. We admit that money is necessary 
even for churches, but we deny that it is the 
first or most important necessity, or that the 
amount of money raised, however huge, is any 
criterion of the Church's true power. Its 
source of power is always and only in its moral 
and spiritual leadership; and this is what the 
churches must regain before their money can 
accomplish real and lasting benefit. 

The revolt against the institutions of religion 
to-day may mean much for the religion of the 
future, and may tend, as nothing else, to bring 
the Church to itself, and thus empower it for 
its true mission in the world. A prominent 
Englishman, writing recently in the Atlantic 
Monthly, calls attention to the fact that there 
is a profound desire for religion in England 
that no church or sect is satisfying at present. 

19 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

He closes his article with these significant 
words: "The question remains which no one 
yet can answer, whether any existing church 
has the energy to grasp the full-orbed concep- 
tion of the Kingdom of Heaven, both as an 
inner and an outer thing, to free itself from its 
own past, to proclaim the truth that Christian- 
ity is yet to be discovered b3^ all the powers of 
man's mind, and to be practised by all the 
energy of his will. If not, we may dare to 
predict that a new Church will arise and de- 
stroy the old ones." It takes no prophet to 
see that a church that identifies religion with 
narrow patriotism, whose doctrines belong, in 
their phrasing, to an age that is gone, whose 
organization is undemocratic and whose spirit 
is exclusive, for which there has dawned no 
social vision and which is blind to the revolu- 
tionary character of its message, — for such a 
church there can be no possible future. 

If the limits of space did not forbid, it would 
be interesting to trace the same spirit of revolt 
in the intellectual and moral life of to-day. 
Nothing is more strikingly significant than the 
new emergence of the spiritual sense, or the 

20 



AN AGE OF REVOLT 

mystical spirit, in quarters where we would be 
least likely to look for it. It is true, wonder- 
fully true, that "the moon is rising again and 
the tide of dreams once more floods the naked 
shingles of the world." The old star-lit 
mystery of things is coming back, and life is 
filled once more with meaning and signifi- 
cance. The very science that since the time 
of Darwin has seemed to be taking all the 
glory out of the sky and all of the divineness 
out of life, is to-day becoming more and more 
mystical, or in other words, less and less hostile 
toward the things of the spirit. Every day 
this science is confirming more clearly man's 
intuitive faith that he is spirit, that he does not 
live by bread alone, and that the meaning of 
his life is something mysteriously sacred, ra- 
diant and exalted beyond all mortal telling. 

The new interest in the history of mysticism, 
in its philosophy and in the lives of the great 
mystics, as evidenced by the surprising number 
of volumes recently published on such sub- 
jects, would seem to indicate that the spirit in 
man is in revolt against the dogmatic material- 
ism of so much of modern science, of its 

21 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

mechanistic theory of the universe, of its ab- 
sorption in physical phenomena merely, and 
its unwillingness to accept or even to investi- 
gate the empirical evidence of the inner life 
of man. The tragic history of modern Ger- 
many reveals the fact that a science and a 
philosophy, blinded to the things of the spirit 
and dedicated to the ideal of power merely, is 
doomed to certain downfall. The fault, of 
course, is not due to science and philosophy as 
such, but rather to the arbitrary limitations 
imposed upon them, to the inadequacy of their 
methods and the superficiality of their treat- 
ment. It is against these limitations that the 
revolt is on in the intellectual realm, demand- 
ing a truer science and a completer philosophy 
for the future. 

In the same way, the revolt in the moral 
realm is directed against the merely conven- 
tional morality that has proved so helpless in 
this time of stress and strain. The morality 
of expediency, that may pass unquestioned in 
times of peace, reveals its utter inadequacy 
when civilization is trembling in the balance. 

22 



AN AGE OF REVOLT 

The leaders in every land who seem so power- 
less to even point the way out of the present 
chaos to some higher order, stand self-con- 
demned, as lacking the knowledge of those 
fundamental principles of morality, and as 
failing to possess that clear moral idealism, 
which alone are capable of ushering in the bet- 
ter day for humanity. It is the rank and file 
of the people who see this weakness most 
keenly, — the unsophisticated men and women, 
— and it is they who are demanding a higher 
type of morality both in private and public life. 
It is clear that the revolt is against the con- 
ventional limiting of morals to the individual 
life, while the worlds of politics, of business, 
of industry are practically regarded as being 
above or beyond the reach of all moral law. 

What is becoming increasingly plain to all 
reflecting minds is that the spirit of revolt that 
is finding expression in the political, the social, 
the economic, the intellectual, the religious and 
the moral worlds is, in the last analysis, a re- 
volt within oneself; or better still, a revolt 
against oneself, — against the imperfect self, 

23 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

and the only self that most of us know as yet. 

All thoughtful minds realize more or less 
clearly to-day that both sin and salvation are 
social as well as individual facts. Whatever 
limitations or weaknesses or shortcomings may 
characterize our age, it is clear that we are all 
of us in some actual degree responsible. We 
must either all go up together or else go down 
together ; there is no such thing as being saved 
or lost alone. We are all members one of an- 
other, organically related in one living Whole ; 
so that in a real sense, what we are, all are. 
Whatever our age may prove to be, depends 
at bottom on what we, the individual men and 
women living in this age, actually are in our 
deepest selves. 

For this reason, the widespread revolt 
against things-as-they-are is really nothing else 
than a revolt against ourselves as we are; for 
it is we who make the age what it is. If the 
age is blind or materialistic or selfish or lacking 
in moral idealism, it is because these weak- 
nesses are present in us, for the age is but the 
reflection of ourselves. We shall never be- 
come equal to ushering in any better age until, 

24 



AN AGE OF REVOLT 

first of all, we ourselves become better men 
and women. 

"The fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves, dear 
Brutus, that we are underlings." 



25 



CHAPTER II 

THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

"New occasions teach new duties, 
Time makes ancient good uncouth; 
We must upward be and onward 
Who would keep abreast of Truth." — Lowell. 

ALL human progress involves change, but 
it by no means follows that all change 
registers progress. To determine whether the 
spirit of revolt that is so insistently opposing 
the institutions and systems under which man- 
kind has been living its life, is demanding 
changes that will mean real progress for hu- 
manity, depends upon the causes out of which 
the revolt actually springs, and the ends to- 
ward which it is definitely moving. 

It must be kept in mind that this spirit of 
revolt is not confined to any one nation or race ; 
it is literally world wide. It is not limited to 
any particular phase of man's life, but includes 
the entire range of his thought, activity and 

26 



THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

aspiration. The whole world has been passing 
through a convulsion that has shaken it to its 
very depths. It is not the superstructure of 
civilization that is being threatened, but the 
deep foundations themselves, upon which must 
be based everything that is of worth and mean- 
ing to man. 

There are many clergymen, of the pre-mil- 
lennial school of thought, who would have us 
believe that the turning and overturning that is 
taking place signifies nothing else than the 
literal end of the world. We need not share 
their gloomy and childish apprehensions; but 
one thing is sure : The spirit of revolt, so uni- 
versal, so profound and so all-inclusive of the 
different realms in which man lives and moves 
and has his being, can mean nothing less than 
the dawning of a new epoch in the life of hu- 
manity. 

All exercise of the strong hand of authority, 
every use of drastic measures of repression, all 
insistence upon the necessity of preserving the 
"existing order" may succeed in postponing, 
but it can never permanently halt the com- 
ing of the new day. For the hour has struck 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

at last, on the great dial of human history, 
when things-as-they-are must give place to 
things-as-they-are-to-be. 

Only the most superficial observer comforts 
himself any longer with the thought that the 
social upheaval we are witnessing throughout 
the world is "the mere inevitable result of the 
war"; and that, with the ratification of the 
Peace Treaty and the starting up again of the 
wheels of industry in the war-stricken coun- 
tries, all social unrest will gradually quiet 
down; so that, before the lapse of many 
months, the world will have settled back into 
"normal conditions." Such prophets of Peace 
utterly fail to understand either the nature or 
the extent of the revolt that sweeps the world 
to-day. It is indeed the inevitable result of 
the war, but in a vastly deeper sense than most 
people imagine as yet. The war has left fields 
untilled, industry crippled, business paralyzed, 
homes desolated, hearts sorrowing, and hun- 
dreds of millions burdened with grievous taxa- 
tion for generations to come. But, in some 
large degree, this is the tragic fruitage of all 
wars. If these were the only, or even the 

28 



THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

chief, results of the great war, we might in- 
deed look forward with the assurance that in 
the near future, the unrest and disorder and 
revolt that mark these post-war days would 
surely pass away. 

The most significant results of this war, 
however, lie much deeper than the present 
hunger and want and sorrow that fill the world. 
As yet we can only glimpse them in their gen- 
eral outlines; it remains for the future to re- 
veal them in all their potent details. This 
war, in contradistinction- to all other wars of 
history, has aroused the people everywhere to 
think for themselves, it has set free the deep 
and powerful forces that have always been 
latent in the breast of humanity but that have 
only now begun to function in their universal 
aspects, it has served to formulate ideals and 
crystallize convictions and awaken determina- 
tions; in a word, it has loosed everywhere the 
dynamic forces of humanity that the spirit of 
autocracy in all ages has sought to keep in 
chains of subjection. But the chains are 
broken to-day, for the People have awakened 
to self -consciousness at last. 

29 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

That this has been the great achievement of 
this war is due, not only to the number of 
countries involved or the millions of men en- 
gaged or the terrific losses incurred or the un- 
precedented cost in money or the bitterness 
with which the struggle has been waged, but, 
more than all else, to the fact that the time was 
ripe in human history, as never before, for the 
awakening of the people as a whole to their 
real place, their just rights and their true 
power in the world. All the events of all the 
past have been preparing the people for this 
momentous hour of their emancipation from 
the bonds of every sort of tyranny. Never 
before in history could a war, even had it been 
as great as this war, have found the people so 
ready to learn its tragic lessons and profit by 
its profound sufferings. 

All previous wars, excepting of course civil 
uprisings, have been wars of rulers and po- 
tentates, in which the people have been merely 
the pawns to do their masters' bidding. They 
gave their lives unthinkingly, in the spirit of a 
blind sense of duty; and after the war was 
over, they settled back again into a more or 

SO 



THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

less uneasy slumber. But, regardless of its 
beginnings, this has been the peoples' war. 
The rank and file, both in the field and at 
home, have fought and suffered and sacrificed 
in the firm conviction that this was to be the 
war that should end wars. To that great end, 
the people have realized that a reorganization 
of the world-life was imperative, that a new 
basis must be found for civilization and a new 
spirit achieved in the collective life of human- 
ity. 

The extent to which this was believed and 
the degree to which it has furnished the motive 
power for the enthusiasm and courage of the 
men engaged, is revealed by all who have come 
into personal contact with the armies of the 
various nations. This is the absolutely unique 
feature of the war just ended that has created 
the lofty moral idealism in the hearts of men. 
It has been due to the wider diffusion of educa- 
tion, the larger development of the moral 
sense, the deeper growth of the social spirit,, 
the keener realization that, in every war, the 
people must pay the tragic costs while the real 
w r ar-makers either profit or go free, and above 

31 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

all, to the consciousness, never before so clearly 
aroused, that the people themselves hold it in 
their own hands to decide the future destiny of 
mankind. The longer the war continued, the 
more pronounced became this conviction. 
Multitudes who had only thought in terms of 
their little villages before, have been learning 
to think in terms of the nation, and in many 
cases, even in world-terms. In spite of all the 
fierce nationalisms that have been aroused, 
some conception of a coming Internationalism 
has begun to emerge, more or less clearly, in 
countless minds. 

Because of these unique, and hitherto un- 
heard of, spiritual forces which the war has 
called forth, not only in its righting men but 
also in a large proportion of the populations 
back at home, it has made little difference to 
the people how old-fashioned might be the 
terms of any Peace Treaty decided upon at 
Paris. For the people have long since deter- 
mined that the final Peace must be a Peace of 
justice, involving such a reorganization of in- 
ternational relations as should ensure a per- 
manent Peace for the world. And the people 

32 



THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

know to-day that they possess the power to 
secure eventually just such a Peace, and that 
it was only for such a Peace that they have 
made all the great sacrifices. 

It is to these deeper sources that the spirit of 
revolt must be traced, rather than to any mere 
unsettling process of the surface of man's life, 
occasioned by the war. And we shall fail ut- 
terly in our interpretation of this most charac- 
teristic spirit of the times, unless we view it 
from the deeper source whence it springs. In 
other words, the war has only brought to the 
surface and awakened to fulness of life what 
has long been slumbering beneath the surface 
in all lands. The war is the immediate cause 
of a revolt, whose predisposing causes lie far 
behind us in the past. 

In "Sartor Resartus," one of the great 
books of the nineteenth century, Carlyle sug- 
gests the real cause of the revolt that so clearly 
marks the first quarter of the twentieth cen- 
tury. In his quaint philosophy of clothes, he 
points out that just as all the garments we 
wear are, sooner or later, outgrown or become 
threadbare, and have to be patched or dis- 

33 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

carded for new and more fitting garments, 
even so it is with all the institutions, systems, 
laws, customs, beliefs and ideals in which man 
has from time to time arrayed himself. Even 
the best of them are at length outgrown and 
become old-fashioned and obsolete; they cease 
to fulfil the original purpose for which they 
were intended. So that the time inevitably 
comes when man must discard these outworn 
or outgrown institutions, systems, laws and 
beliefs, and fashion for himself garments more 
fitting to his present-day needs. 

Carlyle, and other prophetic souls like him, 
only saw fifty years and more ago what most 
intelligent men have come to see clearly to- 
day. And since Carlyle's time, these nonde- 
script garments of civilization have steadily 
been becoming more threadbare and dilapi- 
dated than when he wrote. The simple fact 
is that humanity has been fast outgrowing the 
forms and institutions and beliefs that have 
been handed down from the past. The gar- 
ments of a nineteenth-century civilization are 
no longer suitable to, nor do they, fit the man of 

34 



THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

to-day. For man himself has been constantly- 
growing, and growing far more rapidly than 
have the forms of the civilization under which 
he lives his life. He has been growing in his 
knowledge, in his moral ideals, in his social 
consciousness and in his spiritual powers of 
perception. 

All forms of life depend upon the harmony 
of the living organism with its environment; 
when that harmony is interrupted, death en- 
sues. We know that this law holds true of 
man's physical life, but we have not always 
perceived that it holds just as true of his 
higher moral and spiritual being. The politi- 
cal institutions, economic systems, religious be- 
liefs and moral ideals that have held sway over 
man's life for the last century and more, grew 
naturally out of certain needs in human life at 
the time when they came into existence. The 
particular forms they took at that time de- 
pended upon man's knowledge of himself and 
of his fellows, of the laws of nature, of the 
principles making for social control, and es- 
pecially, upon how far along he had come in 

35 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

his perception of those fundamental moral 
laws that underlie the harmonious collective 
life of man. 

But while all institutions, systems, laws, be- 
liefs and ideals inevitably tend to become 
static, man is forever a dynamic being. In 
the nature of things, he can never become sat- 
isfied with things-as-they-are. In just the 
measure that he does become content, he ceases 
to aspire and so ceases truly to live. It is this 
inborn capacity for divine discontent that ex- 
plains the spirit of revolt in man, whenever it 
appears, that proves man's real divinity and 
that lifts him immeasurably above the brute 
creation. 

It is this that makes the present age of 
world-wide revolt such a wonderful age in 
which to be alive. It is not its chaotic con- 
fusion of mind, its vacillating uncertainty, its 
apparent lack of moral leadership or its mighty 
problems, but rather, its deep-seated capacity 
for protest against the world as it is and its 
ability to visualize an ideal Kingdom of 
Heaven here on earth, that should give to the 
present generation its real zest for living, its 

36 



THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

vital faith in the future and its unflagging in- 
spiration to solve the problems that imme- 
diately confront it. 

The political ideals for the state, as set forth 
by the liberal school of economists in France, 
England and the United States at the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century, were based on 
an optimistic conception of human nature. 
They held that, if man was only given perfect 
freedom to follow his own self-interest, it 
would eventually work out for the best inter- 
ests of all. They sought, therefore, to mini- 
mize the authority of the State and its exercise 
over the individual, with the result that the 
theory underlying the authority of the State 
became the theory of the "passive policeman." 
The State should keep all hands off the actions 
of the individual, stepping in to interfere only 
in case of an emergency or when some special 
trouble arose. 

Meantime the industrial revolution, made 
possible by the invention of machinery, had 
been ushered in, bringing to industrial coun- 
tries a tremendously rapid development of 
manufacturing interests. The "passive police- 

37 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

man" theory of government fitted in very com- 
fortably with the self-interest of the manufac- 
turers; but instead of justifying the optimism 
of the economists as to the working out of free 
self-interest, we find factory conditions reach- 
ing a most deplorable state, even in so enlight- 
ened a country as England. The unjust con- 
ditions that have continued to prevail between 
capital and labor in all industrial countries, 
while they have been vastly changed for the 
better through the force of public sentiment, 
are to-day still the cause of the industrial un- 
rest and grow out, primarily, of the lack of 
proper regulation by an enlightened State. 

It has been for some time a commonplace 
that the conventional nineteenth-century doc- 
trine of the State is breaking down beneath 
the pressure of facts and events; but it has 
been far from clear whither the new movement 
was tending and whether it had constructive 
elements within itself. Both in theory and 
practise, the State is in the melting pot, though 
it may be said that the outlines of the new con- 
ception are beginning to appear. 

This much, at least, is daily becoming more 

38 



THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

apparent, that the truly democratic State is 
not the State that leaves all people free to do 
as they please, but one that is so organized that 
all its people are made free from the encroach- 
ments of selfishness and greed in any form; 
that sees to it that all individuals, even the 
weakest and lowest in the social scale, secure 
nothing but the square deal. It is thus that 
humanity has outgrown the older political in- 
stitutions and is demanding to-day a more ad- 
equate conception of the functions of Govern- 
ment to meet the demands of justice for all. 

Thus the economic system that gained its 
first foothold in society at the time of the in- 
dustrial revolution and that has steadily grown 
in scope and power, until to-day it almost 
seems to have superseded the State in the 
range of its influence, can no longer be tol- 
erated in its present autocratic form if liberty 
and freedom are to be anything more than 
empty words in modern life. It is not within 
the province of this work to consider the var- 
ious solutions of the economic problems that 
present themselves to us to-day. It is enough 
to say, in this connection, that a system that 

39 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

literally gives to the employing class the power 
of life and death over the employed, that 
creates class antagonism and bitterness, that 
results in the massing of wealth in the hands 
of the few while the many live only from hand 
to mouth, that produces the grave inequalities 
so apparent in modern society and that fosters 
inevitably the spirit of hatred in the commun- 
ity, — that such a system is radically wrong in 
principle and must be changed. 

All the protests, all the revolts and often- 
times the violence that find expression in all 
social classes against the fundamental in- 
justice of such a system, are simply the visible 
proof that humanity has outgrown the present 
form of the economic system under which it 
has been living for the last hundred years, and 
is demanding that a more just and righteous 
system take its place. 

The intellectual revolt, difficult as it may be 
to interpret it aright, is also, in its deepest as- 
pects, a revolt against the inadequacy of the 
present-day philosophy that would make man 
a prisoner in a world of time and sense. The 
older philosophy was fundamentally idealistic ; 

40 



THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

it presupposed a universe, significant for hu- 
man life, which was there to be accepted or 
rejected; it recognized the spirit in man as one 
with the Universal Spirit; it believed in end- 
less progression for the human spirit. 

But for a generation or so, our philosophy 
has tended to become more and more prag- 
matic, scientific, economic, democratic, while 
the eternal phenomena of man's inner life have 
been relegated to the background as unim- 
portant. The result is that man's inner nature 
has been starved. He has become spiritually 
anemic, not because the problems dealt with 
by modern philosophy are not vitally im- 
portant, but because they do not comprise the 
whole of life. They leave out the realm where 
the spiritual man must always live his deepest 
life, — the realm of intuition, of faith and as- 
piration. Man must know what to do and 
how to act, but he craves yet more the knowl- 
edge of who he really is, and why he is here at 
all, and what he is here for. He needs to un- 
derstand himself in all the complexities of his 
being. He seeks to discover the hidden and 
latent powers of mind and heart and will. He 

41 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

longs to awaken and develop all that he 
vaguely feels is potential within him. He 
wants to become clearly, profoundly conscious 
of himself, of his true Self which he knows lies 
vastly deeper than any mere surface self. 

It is because so much of our present-day 
philosophy is practical but not deep, clever but 
not profound, exact but not comprehensive, 
dealing with earth but forgetting heaven, 
touching the near but leaving out the stars, 
concerned with what is called real but blind to 
ideals, — for these reasons man, in the totality 
of his being, turns away from it all unsatisfied. 
He knows within himself that he is too big for 
its littlenesses, too broad for its limitations, 
too ideal for its realities, too spiritual for its 
materialism. It is far too inadequate to in- 
terpret for him his infinite universe, his own 
limitless life and the ideal Kingdom of Heaven 
which he sees in his loftiest dreams. He is 
confident that there is far more of meaning, 
even if it be mysterious meaning, in his life 
than is dreamt of in current philosophies. 

What is to be the outcome? The philo- 

42 



THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

sophic task for to-day does not consist merely 
in a defiant reaffirmation of old faiths; that 
would be to ignore utterly the law of progress. 
But it must be a reconstruction of old faiths 
in terms of the new forces that are shaping our 
lives. If the old philosophic idealism is in- 
adequate to the new conditions, that does not 
mean that an arbitrary "will to power," a 
pragmatic self-assertiveness, is to take its 
place. If we are to create effectively, it will 
only be because and in so far as we meet the 
authentic conditions of our larger world, 
spiritual as well as material. This means that 
deeper than our "will to create" is our will to 
appropriate and to possess the world of ideal 
values. It means that, however changed in 
form it may be, idealism, the conviction of a 
significant reality that conditions all our in- 
terpretations, will still remain fundamental. 
The pragmatic reaction against the idealisms 
of the past has done its effective and needed 
work. But the intellectual revolt to-day sug- 
gests, at least, that the time is ripe for the ex- 
pression, in a new way, of the immanent ideal- 

43 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

ism of our modern life. For such a true and 
more adequate philosophy, the world expect- 
antly waits. 

In a similar way, the religious revolt is not 
directed against religion as such, but against 
both its theological and ecclesiastical expres- 
sions. Man feels instinctively that true re- 
ligion must be bigger than its organizations, 
better than its adherents, more vital than its 
creeds and rituals. There never was a time 
when there was more religion in the world than 
to-day, but most of it is to be found outside 
of all accredited organizations. For the most 
part, real religion is inarticulate, unformu- 
lated, unorganized, and therefore, ineffective 
in working the transformation it seeks. As 
Sabatier so truly says: *'Man is incurably 
religious," and never more so than when he 
has outgrown the old creeds and is reaching 
beyond old forms for moral and spiritual val- 
ues that the old no longer furnish. The future 
is bright indeed with promise for religion; but 
whether it will find its home in the old churches, 
or will be forced to fashion for itself new chan- 
nels through which it can more adequately find 

44 



THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

expression, depends upon the churches them- 
selves, — whether they possess the faith and the 
courage to adjust themselves to the new order. 

The religious doubts and questionings that 
fill men's minds to-day are the sure indications 
of a living faith in the things of religion, when 
once men have worked their way through to 
a positive, constructive belief. The serious 
doubts of to-day are a far more healthful sign 
than would be mere blind, unthinking acquies- 
cence in the beliefs that have been. For, 
"there is more faith in honest doubt than half 
the creeds." 

Even the large numbers who have aban- 
doned the churches and formed no new relig- 
ious affiliations of any kind, are not for that 
reason to be condemned as being irreligious, 
for many of them have honestly felt obliged 
to leave the churches as they are, in order to 
become Christians. The religious revolt, in its 
deeper aspects, is clearly a revolt against 
Christianity-the-system, for the sake of the 
universal, moral and spiritual religion that was 
voiced by Jesus. This is illustrated by the 
title of a recent article by one of the most 

45 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

thoughtfully religious men in the country: 
"Can Christianity any longer tolerate the 
Church?" It is thus that the religious spirit 
of to-day has outgrown religion as expressed 
by the churches. 

In international relations, it is self-evident 
that humanity has consciously outgrown the 
old conditions that have always held between 
nations. As G. Lowes Dickinson clearly 
points out, these relations have meant inter- 
national anarchy. The only wonder is that 
the world has tolerated them for so long. 
Each nation has considered that it was a law 
unto itself, and that any course of action was 
justified if only it had the power to pursue it 
successfully. The war has demonstrated that 
our boasted international law was nothing but 
"a scrap of paper." But it is not until now 
that the world has demanded that the old in- 
ternational anarchy be replaced by an inter- 
national order, without which no civilization 
can ever hope to be stable or permanent. 

Thus far we have sought to show that the 
age into which we have come is characterized 
throughout by the spirit of revolt, that it is 

46 



THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

practically universal and that it involves all 
the realms of mind and spirit in which man 
lives his life. We have tried to prove that the 
significance of this revolt lies in the fact that 
it proceeds not from superficial causes, but 
from deep-lying sources in the being of man 
himself. It is to be found everywhere in the 
world to-day simply because man has out- 
grown the institutions, systems, laws, beliefs 
and ideals under which he has been living his 
life hitherto. He had long been outgrowing 
them before the war came; and what the war 
has done has been to call into clear conscious- 
ness this fact, and to crystallize man's deter- 
mination to fashion for himself and for the 
world, new institutions, systems, laws, beliefs 
and ideals that will be more adequate to his 
needs and more truly expressive of his new 
spirit. 

For this reason it must be clear that no mere 
patchwork methods can succeed ; the time is far 
too late for that. Nothing but a resolute and 
courageous facing of all the problems involved 
and the persistent determination not to rest 
until they have been solved right, that is, in 

47 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

accordance with the principles of justice and 
fairness to all, can ever hope to satisfy the 
spirit of revolt in the world to-day. We must 
dare to accustom ourselves to the thought that 
things-as-they-have-been must give place to 
things-as-they-are-to-be. We must come to 
confidently rejoice that to us of this generation 
has been entrusted the solemn responsibility of 
preserving all that is good in the old order, at 
the same time that we help to usher in the new 
day for humanity. 

Because of the deeper meaning of the spirit 
of revolt, in revealing man's divine capacity 
for making real the Kingdom of Heaven here 
on earth, there is no ground for fear or pes- 
simism, but only for the strongest confidence 
and the loftiest hopes. The great ages are 
never the easy ages in which to live. Just be- 
cause of its unique greatness, our age is pecu- 
liarly hard and difficult, calling for the very 
highest qualities of manhood and womanhood. 
But as Phillips Brooks has counseled: "Do 
not pray for easy lives; pray rather to be 
stronger men and women." 

There are many to-day who feel a deep 

48 



THE CAUSES OF REVOLT 

sympathy with the wailing complaint of Ham- 
let: 

"The times are out of joint. O cursed spite 
That ever I was born to set them right." 

These are the words of a coward, however, 
never of the brave man. The spirit we need in 
such an age comes to us like a challenge, in 
those ringing words of Rupert Brooke, the 
gifted English poet who lost his life in the 
Mediterranean campaign: 

"Now, God be thanked, who has matched me with His hour." 



49 



CHAPTER III 

THE DEMAND FOR UNITY 

"Nothing in the world is single, 
All things by a Law Divine 
In one another's being mingle." — Shelley. 

IT is not within the province of this work to 
consider in detail the problems confronting 
the world to-day, to describe the paths that 
may lead to the new order for humanity, or 
even to suggest the methods by means of which 
the needed changes may be brought about. 
This is the task for the experts and specialists. 
What we are seeking, rather, is to indicate the 
spirit that animates the mass of men every- 
where, to outline its essential nature, to inter- 
pret its deeper meaning and to suggest the 
great goal which, either consciously or uncon- 
sciously, it is earnestly striving to attain. 

We have defined the spirit of the age as the 
spirit of revolt against things-as-they-are, a 
spirit born out of the deep conviction that man 

50 



THE DEMAND FOR UNITY 

has outgrown the older civilization which has 
finally culminated in the most bitter and 
tragic war of history, and is ready at last for 
such a reorganization of society and of the 
world as shall be more nearly adequate to his 
needs and more truly representative of his 
ideals. But if the spirit in man is in revolt 
from things that have been, it must, in just the 
degree that it is an intelligent revolt, have some 
actual goal in sight. It must be positive as 
well as negative, constructive as well as de- 
structive; in displacing what has been it must 
be prepared to replace the old with something 
new ; and it needs to be very sure that its some- 
thing new is better than the old. 

It is this that makes the present age so ex- 
tremely critical for the future of humanity, 
and it is at just this point that the world is 
confronting the gravest dangers. There is no 
denying the fact that for multitudes the revolt 
is a blind revolt, unthinking and unseeing be- 
yond the immediate present of injustice and 
wrong under which so many suffer. Men are 
striking out, literally and figuratively, against 
conditions that exist, without any very clear 

51 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

idea of the conditions that should take their 
place. While their conscious motives may not 
be wholly destructive, the sum total of their 
revolt would prove to be so in the end, and its 
success would result in pulling down the good 
rather than in building up a better. 

It may easily be questioned how many of the 
leaders of revolt to-day, both in its passive and 
violent aspects, are far-sighted, broad-visioned, 
deep -thinking men, who thoroughly under- 
stand their age, who realize the significance of 
the mighty forces at work and who see clearly 
the goal for which they are striving. Un- 
fortunately, there are too many leaders in all 
countries who are, at heart, mere demagogues 
or clever opportunists who have seized upon 
the general unrest of the people and are prosti- 
tuting it to their own selfish ends, and many 
more whose zeal, however sincere, far outstrips 
their knowledge. But this only makes all the 
more imperative the appearance of the truly 
great leaders, the big, broad, intelligent, un- 
selfish men and women who are willing to dedi- 
cate all their gifts and knowledge to the wise 
and dispassionate guidance and control of the 

52 



THE DEMAND FOR UNITY 

powerful forces operating to-day in the life of 
humanity. 

But, however blind or unthinking or selfish 
many may be, what is the goal we are really 
seeking? If we think we know what we are 
revolting from, do we know what we are re- 
volting to? What is the actual end we need 
to gain if we are to truly discover the right 
solution of our many complex problems? 
What is the guiding principle or ideal that 
alone will enable us to direct the spirit of re- 
volt through all the dangers that threaten, to- 
ward a new age that shall be unmistakably bet- 
ter than the old, and that shall mark, as we 
trust, the next step forward for humanity? 

Once again, let us repeat, we are not at- 
tempting any detailed description in this con- 
nection of the forms the new civilization will 
present. No man is wise enough to predict 
that future with any degree of certainty. 
What we seek is some fundamental principle 
upon which the new civilization may hope to 
build permanently and effectively in the inter- 
est of the progress of all humanity. And we 
find that principle, which is at the same time 

53 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

an ideal, contained in the great word, — Unity. 

It matters not to which school of political 
thought we may belong, — Tory or Liberal, Re- 
publican or Democrat, Anarchist or Com- 
munist, Socialist or Guild Socialist, — nor to 
what philosophical or religious creed we give 
adherence, we venture to affirm that, underly- 
ing all our differing ideals as to what the world 
needs, and must find, in order to solve its great 
problems, the fundamental and primary need 
is for a fuller realization of some conception 
of unity. We shall deal in the next chapter 
with the meaning of unity ; for the present, let 
us confine our thought to the imperative de- 
mand of the age for some kind of a closer unity 
in the life of mankind. 

If the spirit of revolt is the striking feature 
of our age, its demand for unity is even more 
significant. At a time when the entire world 
has been rent asunder, when, with few excep- 
tions, all the nations have been pitting their 
maximum of strength and resources against 
one another, when, within the nation, society 
is divided against itself in a bitter class strug- 
gle, when hatred and prejudice have dug 

54 



THE DEMAND FOR UNITY 

deeper gulfs and erected more tragic barriers 
between men than ever existed before, when, 
even with the coming of Peace, we seem to be 
witnessing fiercer national rivalries and more 
bitter internal struggles and controversies than 
before the war, it seems strange, and yet not 
so strange, that from the heart of mankind 
should go forth the mighty longing for a unity 
that does not exist as yet, save in our ideals. 
In such an age of inconceivably destructive 
disunity, the heart of humanity is funda- 
mentally sound in its imperious demand for 
unity. 

In spite of the conditions produced by the 
war, however, we remember that the real be- 
ginnings, at least, of an international organiza- 
tion had taken place in the nineteenth century. 
The postal service and, later, the cable and 
radio services between different countries were 
the sure signs of a growing sense of unity 
among nations. The adoption, toward the 
close of the century, of a common system of 
weights and measures, together with interna- 
tional federations of all kinds, had served to 
bind the various peoples into a closer fellow- 

55 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

ship. International congresses, devoted to all 
varieties of interests, had been multiplying 
every year. Even a World's Parliament of 
Religions had been most successfully held in 
connection with the World's Fair in Chicago in 
1892. Plans had been broached for a Federa- 
tion of the Chambers of Commerce of the lead- 
ing cities of all lands, with a view of eventually 
organizing a World's Chamber of Commerce. 
In addition to these public international organ- 
izations, it has been estimated by a recent 
writer that more than 400 private international 
federations or societies had come into being be- 
fore the breaking out of the war. 

The tremendously rapid increase of travel 
between different lands during the last genera- 
tion, with the resulting mutual acquaintance 
between various peoples and the better under- 
standing of institutions, languages, laws, cus- 
toms, etc., of different countries, the wide- 
spread study of the modern sciences of com- 
parative literatures and comparative religions, 
the countless ties formed through personal 
friendships as well as through commercial re- 
lationships, — all this had tended to awaken an 

56 



THE DEMAND FOR UNITY 

intelligent appreciation of the life and achieve- 
ments of other peoples, out of which had 
grown inevitably a new and deeper interna- 
tional sympathy. 

When we recall these facts and the many 
other indications of the growing sense of unity 
that have characterized the last fifty years, it 
is not surprising that the coming of the war 
which, on the surface, seemed to be the com- 
plete denial of any unity, should suggest at 
once to the progressive minds of all nations the 
idea of some sort of world organization that 
should make such costly wars impossible in the 
future. As a matter of fact, the soil had long 
been in preparation, through these preliminary 
attempts at international organization and the 
steadily increasing intercourse between differ- 
ent peoples, for an international organization 
that should take in all the political states of 
the world. Such a plan was bound to come, 
sooner or later. The war simply hastened its 
coming. 

When men awoke to the consciousness that, 
in the supposedly enlightened twentieth cen- 
tury, the nations of the world were still living 

57 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

in a state of international anarchy, and that 
international law was such a travesty on the 
name that the peace and progress of the world 
was in constant danger, it was inevitable that 
the idea of a League of Nations should take 
strong hold of the imagination and will of man- 
kind with compelling force. That the League 
at its birth was far from perfect does not 
change the fact that it stands for a real step 
forward in the direction of actual unity in the 
world's political organization; and the way 
lies open for the people in the respective coun- 
tries to make it, in time, a genuine World 
League, not of Governments but of Peoples, 
— a veritable family of nations on earth. The 
thing to emphasize is that all efforts to achieve 
an actual League of Nations are really di- 
rected toward the realization in fuller measure 
of World-Unity. 

The international socialists, while limiting 
their efforts to uniting the workers of the 
world into one organization, regardless of na- 
tionality, are also inspired by the ideal of 
unity, — the unity of their class. And while 
the disunity which the socialists would create 

58 



THE DEMAND FOR UNITY 

through the fostering of class consciousness 
would seem to be opposed to the idea of any 
general unity, yet we must give them credit 
for believing that the present disunity is only 
the means to a higher unity, when the workers 
of the world will comprise the whole of so- 
ciety, in what they conceive as the socialistic 
state. 

While, in a truly tragic sense, the war has 
served to destroy for a time the large measure 
of unity that had gradually come to exist, in 
another sense it has brought men and nations 
together in new bonds of fellowship and co- 
operation. On one hand we have witnessed 
separations, divisions, alienations ; on the other, 
we have seen new alliances, combinations and 
unions of hearts and hands in the common 
cause. If the first results of the war have em- 
phasized the absence of unity, the second have 
equally emphasized its presence, in places and 
to a degree never experienced before. 

Among the Allied nations, we have seen peo- 
ples banded together in the struggle for com- 
mon ends who in former wars have been 
ranged against each other. In this war they 

59 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

have fought as loyally for one another as at 
previous times they have fought to defeat each 
other. The twenty and more nations, great 
and small, that have been allied against the 
Central Powers have at least achieved a new 
sense of unity among themselves ; and it is not 
difficult to imagine this sense of unity extended 
in time so as to include all nations. This cer- 
tainly is the demand that the people are mak- 
ing for the League of Nations that eventually 
shall come into being. 

Within each nation, the problem of prob- 
lems has been how to achieve, amid all the op- 
posing parties, conflicting opinions and an- 
tagonistic interests, that sense of unity of 
interest and aspiration that shall lift men 
above the plane of mere partisanship or indi- 
vidual self-interest and bind them over in 
service to the common good of the Whole. 
Difficult as the task may seem, no one can 
deny that this is the fundamental need of the 
hour in every land. We can never hope to 
solve successfully our internal problems until 
we have achieved a degree of unity such as now 
does not exist. So long as we are satisfied 

60 



THE DEMAND FOR UNITY 

to be forever working at cross-purposes with 
one another, we need not expect to see much 
improvement in present social conditions. 

During the war, however, a degree of unity 
has been realized that would have seemed well- 
nigh impossible before the breaking out of 
hostilities. Facing what was deemed a com- 
mon danger and with a high sense of duty to 
one's country, all classes in society, — the rich 
and poor, the high and low, employers and em- 
ployees, — all sorts and conditions of men, 
women and even children have united, with 
singular devotion, to do their utmost for the 
sake of winning the war and bringing in the 
era of peace. The spirit of loyal cooperation 
that has found expression in every walk of 
life, — between capital and labor, among native 
born and aliens, with comparatively few ex- 
ceptions, — has been little less than remarkable 
when one considers the various elements from 
all lands that go to make up the one hundred 
millions of our population. 

The greatest lesson that the war has taught 
thus far is the possibility of fellowship and co- 
operation between diverse and seemingly alien 

61 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

elements of the population, that have been 
hitherto undreamed of. The loyal generosity 
shown by the foreign laborers in this country 
toward the various Liberty Loans, the Red 
Cross, Y. M. C. A. and numerous other drives, 
have revealed even their ability to cooperate 
in a common cause in which they believed. 

In other words, the war has made clear the 
unsuspected capacities of even a polyglot pop- 
ulation like ours for achieving unity of purpose 
and action, at least in time of a great national 
emergency such as we have just passed 
through. Growing out of this encouraging 
experience in our life has been born the hope, 
more or less vague as yet, that it may be pos- 
sible so to foster and cultivate this new spirit 
of cooperation, called into being by the war, 
as to perpetuate it into the reconstruction 
period that now lies before us, thus developing 
a deeper and more intelligent spirit of national 
unity than our country has known in the past. 
There is no true American, nor true patriot in 
any land, but realizes that the fundamental 
need of his country, if it is to play its rightful 
part in building the new world, is to achieve 

62 



THE DEMAND FOR UNITY 

within itself a new and deeper unity of pur- 
pose and of ideal. 

It is also significant that the same great 
word has become the watchword of the hour in 
religion. Long before the war, it had become 
apparent to many religious leaders that the 
great crime of Christendom, as it was the 
source of the weakness and ineffectiveness of 
organized religion, lay in the unchristian 
sectarianism of the churches. Various com- 
missions on Christian Unity had been formed, 
and an International Congress had been 
planed to meet in 1916, to consider all matters 
of Faith and Order, making for a closer union 
of the various sects. Whatever may prove to 
be the ultimate influence of the war on religion, 
one thing has already been clearly demon- 
strated, viz., that all forms of sectarianism are 
doomed if the Church is to remain a vital in- 
stitution in the new age. In the work carried 
on in the name of religion, both in the camps 
at home and on the battle-fields of Europe, all 
sectarian distinctions and even names have 
practically been forgotten. And the millions 
who return to their respective homes will care 

63 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

less than ever before for all our denominational 
differences. 

In an age when the whole world is slowly 
but surely setting its face in the direction of 
some sort of unity, of what possible assistance 
can the Church expect to be, until first of all 
it has proved its ability to achieve a deeper 
unity than now exists within itself? The hope- 
ful sign is that so many leaders in all denomi- 
nations do realize that this is the pressing duty 
of the hour. They are speaking out more and 
more frankly, in spite of the fact that they are 
bound to meet the strenuous opposition of the 
more conservative element that always seek to 
perpetuate the old organizations just as they 
have been, in no wise altered or changed, even 
in the presence of the profound changes that 
are taking place in every other department of 
human life. 

In its deeper aspects, however, the striving 
toward religious unity is vastly more than the 
effort to bring about a closer federation of 
church organizations. It seeks the substratum 
of religious philosophy, the common denomi- 
nator of all religions, the essence of all creeds, 

64 



THE DEMAND FOR UNITY 

the soul of all forms, where alone true unity- 
is to be found. By minimizing the importance 
of the externals of religion, it would place the 
true emphasis on its inner heart ; by letting go 
its fringe, it would discover its real center 
where truth is one. The unity sought would 
demonstrate to all that while religions are 
many, religion is always one. 

The intellectual revolt is, at heart, animated 
by the same motive. There is the instinctive 
feeling that somewhere, beneath all our dis- 
cordant and contradictory thinking to-day, 
there must lie a common residuum of truth. 
Science, in the nature of things, is analytic and 
must be the work of highly trained specialists 
who concentrate iheir attention on some par- 
ticular field of investigation. Philosophy, on 
the other hand, is both analytic and synthetic. 
It gleans its data from all fields of scientific 
investigation, it gathers together all the loose 
threads of fact, and then, on these as the 
foundation, its builds its philosophical super- 
structure. 

But for fifty years we have been living in 
an atmosphere that has been increasingly 

65 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

scientific, in which philosophy, as such, has 
been more and more neglected. Even the 
philosophy that has continued to hold its place 
has been predominatingly pragmatic. The 
inevitable result has been confusion and chaos 
in human thinking, growing out of the lack of 
any clear understanding of the fundamental 
principles of thought, and the almost utter ab- 
sence of any comprehensive view of either the 
universe or of life. No philosophy can ever be 
final, but every philosophy should at least 
make some attempt to be comprehensive in its 
interpretation of the deeper significance of the 
whole of life to man. It is only in a larger, 
completer philosophy that the real unity un- 
derlying human thinking can be found. 

The possibilities of such a war as the 
twentieth century has just witnessed, and the 
conditions in which it leaves the world both 
materially and spiritually, have forced the 
ideal of some sort of unity into the very fore- 
ground of man's thought and aspiration. It 
is no longer a question of choice but an im- 
perative duty, solemnly placed upon humanity, 
to achieve a unity that has never yet had its 

66 



THE DEMAND FOR UNITY 

place in the world, unless we are to sink back 
to the plane of barbarism out of which man has 
come. If we are to continue to live our life 
as nations and men on the old individualistic 
basis, with all the fierce competitions and 
deadly rivalries and bitter antagonisms that 
such selfishness inevitably entails, the future of 
civilization is clearly doomed. 

The world must either move forward to 
higher ground or it will most assuredly move 
backwards to lower planes. In the light of 
the tragic revelations of the past five years, 
there is no other alternative. It is either a 
closer unity between nations, classes and in- 
dividuals, or else increasing separations and 
divisions, with wars multiplying, each one 
more deadly than the last, ending eventually 
in race suicide. It is this alternative that the 
true leaders of mankind see so clearly to-day. 

Leagues of Nations, changes in govern- 
ments, drastic legislation, revision of systems, 
revitalizing of morals and religion, — all these 
are necessary and must come; but more pro- 
foundly necessary than all else is a new sense 
of unity, binding all men and all nations into 

67 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

one great Whole, if the impending changes are 
to carry mankind toward higher planes of life 
and infuse all civilization with a new and 
nobler spirit. 

The spirit of revolt, which so distinguishes 
our age from all others, both in the breadth of 
its influence and the depth of its sources, is the 
spirit of rebellion against the confusion and 
uncertainty, the struggle and strife, the fric- 
tion and antagonism, the divisions and separa- 
tions, the misunderstandings and bitterness, 
the prejudice and hatred with which our 
modern age is so rife. In a word, it is the 
determined revolt against the tragic disunity 
which is destroying the very foundations of 
civilization, blighting the most priceless treas- 
ures in human life and delaying the realization 
of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. 

So long as rulers plan in the old spirit, and 
statesmen chatter in the old jargon, and di- 
plomacy follows the old rules, and public 
teachers preach the old ideals, and employers 
are absorbed in their own interests, and the 
few who have are content that the many should 
not have, and churches care more for them- 

68 



THE DEMAND FOR UNITY 

selve than for the Kingdom of Heaven, — just 
so long will simple justice fail of realization; 
the disunity in modern life will multiply in- 
creasingly, while the spirit of revolt will 
steadily grow more bitter and intense until, 
finally, the breaking point is reached. If that 
time should ever come, owing to the blindness 
and selfishness of those who should be the real 
leaders, but are not, the sufferings of the Great 
War would fade into insignificance as com- 
pared with the experiences upon which human- 
ity would then be forced to enter. 

We do not and need not take so pessimistic 
a view of the situation, however, for there are 
many signs of hope upon the horizon. The 
spirit of revolt fills the world, the protests 
against things-as-they-are multiply among all 
classes and conditions of men, the ideal of a 
new and all-inclusive unity is emerging more 
clearly, the new spirit is certainly awakening, 
and the new and nobler leaders will surely 
appear when the time is fully ripe. 



69 



CHAPTER IV 

THE MEANING OF UNITY 

"Go, sweep out the chamber of your heart, 
Make it ready to be the dwelling-place of the Beloved. 
When you depart out, he will enter in, 
In you, void of your self, will he display his beauty." — Anon. 

IT is not enough, however, merely to name 
an ideal; we must be able to define it 
clearly, before it can become a dynamic power 
in life. It is not the word, but its actual con- 
tent, that must be fully grasped and under- 
stood before the ideal stands any chance of 
realization. 

Unity, like the words, democracy, freedom, 
equality, is a word that has come to enshrine 
certain great ideals of humanity. As such, it 
is being used to-day more widely than ever. 
But the danger in any word that thus becomes 
popular in current speech is that so many are 
apt to use it glibly enough without stopping 
to inquire seriously as to its true meaning. 

70 



THE MEANING OF UNITY 

And there is something wonderfully alluring 
in just the sound of the word, — Unity, — to an 
age so sadly rent asunder by divisions of every 
kind. 

As a matter of fact, the word is by no means 
new to this age. Great philosophers in the 
past have discussed the essential unity of hu- 
manity. Great statesmen have worked earn- 
estly for a world organization that should en- 
sure the permanent peace of mankind. Great 
souls have dreamed of a closer social unity and 
dedicated their lives to its achievement. Great 
prophets have prayed and toiled for the com- 
ing of religious unity, and in every age there 
have always been the elect souls who have not 
only believed in but actually practised such 
unity. But while none of these have lived to 
see their lofty dreams realized, we can in no 
sense regard their lives as failures, for they 
have bravely held up the torch of the ideal to 
their respective generations; and we can see 
now that they have only been the divinely sent 
forerunners of a mighty movement that is 
rapidly becoming world-wide to-day. 

That these ideals have never received the 

71 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

attention they deserved is, primarily, due to 
the fact that the world has never before been 
prepared to consider them seriously. From 
the time of Jesus of Nazareth, whose message 
was couched only in terms of the universals of 
life, and whose great purpose was to awaken 
in the hearts of men the sense of unity with 
AU-that-is, these ideals have always been in 
the world. But men were blind to the mean- 
ing of his real message then, even as so many 
who profess his name are still blind or indif- 
ferent to-day. But the heart of the people, 
who always heard him gladly, is interpreting 
his message afresh, not in theological or ec- 
clesiastical terms, but in his own terms of life 
and unity and power. So that it is no longer 
the select few who are reading his message 
aright, but the rank and file of earnest, truth- 
seeking men and women everywhere. 

Still another reason why the ideals enshrined 
in the conception of unity are claiming more 
serious attention than ever before, is because 
there have never been such all-compelling in- 
centives, forcing men to achieve a closer unity 
lest a worse fate befall them. Man's greatest 

72 



THE MEANING OF UNITY 

strides in moral and spiritual development 
have always been made under the driving com- 
pulsions of suffering and sacrifice. The race, 
like the individual, learns its deepest lessons in 
the school of pain; this is one of the laws of 
progress; we must always pay the price for 
what we gain. It is not strange, then, that 
all the sacrifices of the past few years should 
have opened men's eyes to the truth, as the 
great messages of prophet and sage have failed 
to do, compelling them now to seek that unity 
in life without which they feel instinctively 
life will not be worth the living. 

It must also be admitted that, many times 
in the past, the ideals of unity have been pre- 
sented in such a way that thoughtful men have 
felt obliged to regard them as impractical and 
visionary. Those who have voiced them, in 
perfect sincerity, have not always clearly per- 
ceived their meaning, and too often they have 
deserved the name of being "mere sentiment- 
alists." Ideals often suffer most at the hands 
of their friends and exponents. It is enlight- 
ening, however, to remember that ideals, re- 
garded as utterly impractical and visionary by 

73 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

one age, come to be accepted as the only ideals 
worth having by a later generation. History 
reveals more than once that the "impractical 
visionary" has eventually proved to be the 
most practical of guides. Jesus of Nazareth 
has suffered the fate of all "visionary dream- 
ers" until to-day, when he seems to be coming 
into his own at last. The term "practical" 
is purely a relative term after all. Anything 
may be practical when men are ready to re- 
gard it as such and willing to put it to the 
actual test; and anything may be impractical, 
so long as men are unwilling to test it out in 
actual experience. 

Can we formulate in general terms the 
meaning that we put into the ideal of unity 
for the new age? Our conception of the prin- 
ciple of unity is an organic rather than an 
individualistic conception. It means union, — 
the union of individuals who know themselves 
to be vital and necessary parts of a larger 
Whole, in the loyal service of that Whole, and 
this, without the surrender of their uniqueness 
as individuals. It involves the highest and 
fullest development of each individual, not for 

74 



THE MEANING OF UNITY 

his sake alone, but because only through his 
highest development can he perform his true 
function as a member of the Whole, and 
render the largest possible service to the good 
of the Whole. It is the union of all, in the 
service of all, for the sake of all. 

Before proceeding to consider in detail the 
positive content of this ideal of unity, there 
are certain things with which unity is often 
confused that can be ruled out at once. 
Unity, for example, does not mean sameness. 
It is not a mathematical unity that we seek. 
When we speak of the oneness that unites in- 
dividuals or binds nations or races together, 
we do not imply that individuals or nations or 
races are each, in any sense, the "double" of 
other individuals or nations or races. People 
or nations are not one, in the sense that two 
bricks may be equal in measurement, w T eight 
or quality, simply for the reason that society 
is a living organism, not a heap of sand. 

Neither is the ideal, of which we conceive, 
a mechanical unity. In the elaboration of 
organization in modern times and in our striv- 
ing to perfect what we call "efficiency," there 

75 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

is a strong tendency to produce a kind of 
machine-made man. We are standardizing 
everything to-day, even human individuals. 
In our educational systems we have become 
so mechanical oftentimes as to think we 
have reached the highest goal when we have 
successfully standardized our curricula, our 
textbooks, our methods of instruction and 
even the ideas of the pupils. A curious at- 
tempt was recently made in the New York 
City schools, actually to standardize the 
thinking of the boys and girls in the interpre- 
tation of history and current events as given 
to them by their instructors. We classify 
men and women as commodities and approxi- 
mate them to mere items in an industrial 
mechanism; so that if anything happens to a 
worker, one may quickly be substituted for an- 
other, as if they were screws in a machine. It 
is this mechanical conception of unity that so 
many resent, and most rightfully, for such an 
unity is profoundly contradictory and utterly 
subversive of manhood and of life. 

Unity, once again, is not uniformity, as so 
many infer. It is not something produced by 

76 



THE MEANING OF UNITY 

any leveling process, either up or down. All 
levels are, of necessity, "dead levels," from 
which the life element has vanished. A tree 
may be pruned to a certain shape easily 
enough, but if it is alive, in a week's time the 
artificial outline will have disappeared. It is 
not possible to "level" a living thing. Uni- 
formity implies the use of a mold under pres- 
sure; it always involves to some extent, com- 
mensurate with the pressure, the crushing out 
of individuality. No true vision of life offers 
such a view as this. No sane reformer is 
working for such a unity as this. As Emerson 
said, every man who is worthy of the name is 
a non-conformist. He will not be coerced into 
any pattern. There is a boundary to the 
dominion of organization; there is a limit to 
sufferance. When that limit is reached, the 
situation becomes intolerable, and the most 
docile of men finds himself a revolutionary. 
All of which, obviously, is healthful and tends 
lifeward. 

Unity is not to be found in any externals, 
nor yet in those internal qualities which are 
more immediately manifested and perceived. 

77 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

Unity does not mean, then, oneness in natural 
gifts or ability. If individuals were to be 
stripped clean of all things externally attached, 
— titles, fame, home, lands, possessions and 
even bodies — they would not appear precisely 
one in size, capacity, quality, or texture of 
mind or heart or soul. In these deeper areas 
we still find differences. From any external 
view-point, there are great souls and little 
souls, noble souls and mean souls, souls of fine 
texture and souls of coarse texture. There 
are men of extraordinary spiritual vision, and 
men of practically no spiritual vision what- 
ever ; men who are expansive, dynamic centers 
of moral force, and others who are passive and 
inert. So there are bright minds and dull 
minds, quick minds and slow minds, broad 
minds and narrow minds. The simple fact is 
that individuals are not one in physical 
strength, in mental ability, in heart power, in 
soul force, — that is, viewed from without. 

The same thing is true of races and of na- 
tions; and, in a less noticeable degree, of dif- 
ferent communities within the nation. There 
are racial gifts, and characteristic peculiarities 

78 



THE MEANING OF UNITY 

belonging to certain peoples and not possessed 
by other peoples. We contrast the Orient 
with the Occident, and the mind visualizes at 
once two very different kinds of civilizations. 
Or we emphasize the distinctive characteristics 
of the Slavic, the Teutonic, the Latin or the 
Anglo-Saxon peoples. 

Still, in spite of all that can be truly said 
of racial distinctions, national traits and in- 
dividual differences, there can be no question 
but that some kind of unity does lie at the basis 
of the life of humanity, and that it binds all 
races, nations and individuals into one great 
Whole, if we could only clearly perceive it. 
In what sense can unity be predicated of men 
and women, of nations and races, so different 
in place, in function, in gift, in capacity, in 
ability, in development, in experience, in at- 
tainment? Let us examine more in detail the 
organic conception of unity which we have al- 
ready outlined, and inquire as to its deeper 
meaning and the method of its realization. 

At the very outset, let it clearly be under- 
stood that the unity which all the world is, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, seeking can never 

79 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

be learned in colleges, or found in sermons, or 
discovered in books. It cannot be found any- 
where without, but only in a man's own inner 
life. It cannot be imparted by another, but 
must be discovered, each for himself. It is 
not an acquirement, but an achievement. It 
is not found at the end of a syllogism or in the 
conclusion of any argument, but only through 
an inner experience. It is not a fact of science 
merely, or of history, or philosophy, though all 
these may constitute helpful aids in its dis- 
covery. It is, rather, a fact of consciousness, 
a feeling, a realization that has been experi- 
enced by many in the past and can be experi- 
enced by all. Unity does not become real for 
any one, simply because he talks about it, or 
professes to believe in it, or even sincerely de- 
sires it. It is a reality only when one comes 
to know it in actual experience, is conscious of 
it daily and hourly, and has learned to love it 
as one loves life itself. 

The experiences of the truly great souls of 
the race throw a flood of light on the true mean- 
ing of that unity that has become an actual ex- 
perience and is a living fact in the inner con- 

80 



THE MEANING OF UNITY 

sciousness. Buddha, Socrates, Paul, Plot- 
inus, St. Francis of Assisi, Bruno, Tolstoi, 
Emerson, Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, 
and above them all, because his consciousness 
was clearer and more profound than all, Jesus 
of Nazareth, — these have been the world's 
great path-finders in the realization of the true 
ideal of unity. 

From such lives we learn that the sense of 
unity that has become a fact in consciousness 
grows out of the realization, so profound that 
it has become habitual, that "all-that-is" flows 
forth from the same great source of Life ; that, 
in their origin, all who live, move and have be- 
ing proceed from the One Parent- Source. It 
makes little difference whether we call that 
Source, Life, or Force, or Mind, or First 
Cause, or Universal Substance, or by the more 
familiar name of God. The fact remains that 
the same life flows in all our veins and, in the 
last analysis, the same infinite Energy has 
found individualized expression in all races, 
all nations, all men and women. It was be- 
cause of this habitual consciousness that, for 
Jesus wholly, and nineteen centuries later, for 

81 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

Walt Whitman in a striking degree, there was 
no Jew nor Gentile, no Greek nor Barbarian, 
no bond nor free, no privileged ones nor out- 
casts, no good nor bad, but only the children 
of the Universal Father. 

While this has been the professed belief of 
Christendom for centuries, conditions prevail- 
ing in the world to-day only prove that its pro- 
found truth has never yet been experienced 
save by the very few. Like so many mere be- 
liefs, it has been an idea to argue and discuss, 
but not an ideal to be realized. It has had its 
place in man's intellectual life, but it has never 
yet become a dynamic power in his volitional 
life. It has been a theoretical, not an experi- 
enced, truth of consciousness. 

When men come really to know, not simply 
believe, the truth of the Universal Fatherhood 
of God, with all that those words imply, hu- 
manity will have taken a long step toward the 
realization of that unity the world craves so 
earnestly to-day. If Religion could but suc- 
ceed in translating this one truth, which is the 
fundamental truth in all the great World- 
Faiths, into actual terms of experience, it 

82 



THE MEANING OF UNITY 

would have achieved its real purpose in the 
world. The Gospel of God's Fatherhood as 
the Universal Source of all-that-is, the Eternal 
Energy in all men, the Soul of all souls, fully 
grasped and clearly proclaimed, would be the 
only Gospel needed to save the world from the 
disunity that now divides it so sadly. 

But again, the sense of unity that has be- 
come a fact of consciousness grows out of a 
profound realization that humanity is a living 
organism, in which all races, all nations, all 
communities and all individuals are but the in- 
tegral and necessary parts, organs or mejnbers, 
"for we are all members one of another." We 
are all one, in the sense that we each have a 
place and a function within the Whole; and 
each of us, functioning in his place, is neces- 
sary to the complete and harmonious working 
of the Whole. Our unity, then, is the unity of 
service to, or function within, the living body 
of humanity. 

Let us take the analogy of the human body. 
There is no external unity between the great 
muscle which flexes the fighting arm and the 
tiny muscle which moves the eyelid or com- 

83 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

presses the tear-gland ; yet, on the basis of serv- 
ice rendered, each is made one with the other 
by the body's imperative need of each. The 
righting arm would not be of much service, if 
the due compression of the tear-gland did not 
keep the eye cleansed and clear. In the same 
way, the pieces on a chess-board are not one in 
value as they stand ; but for the purpose of the 
combination by which the player makes a bid 
for victory, each piece, from lowest to highest, 
is bound in closest unity to all the rest, in the 
sense that the combination works equally 
through each, and apart from the exercise of 
the position and capacity of each at its fullest, 
the combination will break down and the player 
will lose the game. 

These illustrations will serve to make clear 
what we mean by the modern conception of 
humanity as a living organism. This organic 
conception of society is held by all our fore- 
most social philosophers and writers. It con- 
stitutes the greatest gain for modern thought, 
and has furnished the new social view-point 
from which we approach every problem to-day. 
It has created the new motive that is inspiring 

84 



THE MEANING OF UNITY 

all leaders in their efforts to bring about a 
more complete socialization of the life of man- 
kind, in all the ranges of its activity. It is the 
dynamic power behind every new social pro- 
gram proposed, however crude and imperfect 
it may prove to be. The so-called social move- 
ment, that constitutes the real heart of the age, 
in all its many different expressions, is simply 
the outgrowth of this new social view-point 
that we are all members together in the 
living body of humanity, that we all play a 
necessary part and discharge an indispensable 
function; and that, therefore, the living body 
would be left incomplete and imperfect if any 
of its members should be subtracted there- 
from, or if any of them should fail to function 
in the highest degree commensurate with their 
place and ability. 

The human body is well and strong and 
healthful only when every organ, muscle, 
member, and part is strong and healthful, 
and when all of these are working together 
in truest harmony for the perfect symmetry 
of the body as a whole. The brain must 
be the best kind of a brain, the heart the 

85 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

best kind of a heart, the stomach the best kind 
of a stomach, the eye, the hand and the foot 
must be the best kind of eye, hand and foot, 
if there is to be complete health and unity in 
the body. The brain, heart, stomach, eye, etc., 
must be, each one itself, not another. The 
unity of the body does not exist when all these 
organs, members, parts are one in shape, size, 
function or capacity, but only when all, in spite 
of every difference, are one in serving the liv- 
ing organism of which they are all necessary 
parts. 

So with the body of humanity. The unity 
that underlies all racial, national and indi- 
vidual differences is a unity, not of place or 
function or ability or language or institutions 
or customs or morals or religion or degree of 
development, but a unity of service, rising out 
of the fact that we are all literally members 
one of another, all necessary and indispensable 
parts of the living organism we call humanity. 

This is not to say, however, that our true 
unity depends on the fact that all forms of 
service rendered by different races, nations or 
individuals are the same; neither if one form 

86 



THE MEANING OF UNITY 

of service is compared externally with another 
in range and effect, is all service equal. Com- 
monsense forbids of our thinking of the plow- 
man, when viewed as such, as equal to the 
great poet, or the office-boy as equal to the 
statesman. But as Browning reminds us: 

"All service ranks the same with God." 

Our true spiritual unity grows out of the fact 
that all types of service "rank the same" from 
the view-point of the Whole, that is, it is all 
necessary to the Whole, and therefore "one" 
with all forms of service rendered. 

It is self-evident that this unity is not an 
external or visible thing, but an inner, invisi- 
ble, spiritual fact, to be perceived, if at all, by 
the spiritual consciousness in man. It is rec- 
ognized by all that there is a physical unity 
binding men together; but this unity on the 
physical plane also binds man to the animals 
and even to inanimate nature, for all bodies, 
from stones to man, are formed of the same 
material stuff. The physical unity of all- 
that-is has been bequeathed to all alike; it is 
in no sense an achievement on our part, neither 

87 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

does it ever make, in and of itself, for that 
higher spiritual unity the world is seeking to- 
day. This higher unity has been left for man 
to achieve in the great school of experience, 
unaided by nature. For this reason it repre- 
sents the supremest achievement of which man 
is capable. To enter into the realization of 
this spiritual unity of all-that-is and of all who 
live, is, therefore, the summum bonum of life, 
the goal of all man's age-long striving. 

The fundamental thing in religion, of what- 
soever name, is this consciousness of one's unity 
with All-that-is, in which all sense of separate- 
ness and division from God or man has van- 
ished forever. This has been the experience 
of all the great spiritual seers of the race, and 
to this inner knowledge have they sought to 
summon their fellows. The awakening to this 
consciousness constitutes the "new birth" of 
religion. "Ye must be born again," said 
Jesus, in order to realize your oneness with 
God and your fellows everywhere. The es- 
sence of salvation consists, not in being saved 
from some future punishment, but in being 
saved here and now to this sense of one's unity 

88 



THE MEANING OF UNITY 

with All. If this conception of salvation had 
been the burden of the Churches' message in 
the past, Christendom would not be facing the 
conditions it does to-day. 

There are many people throughout the 
world who are earnestly seeking this experi- 
ence, — the consciousness of their spiritual unity 
with All; there are many others who are more 
or less blindly feeling after it, and there are 
still multitudes to whom it is, as yet, quite 
meaningless. But the experience will come in 
response to the intense desire, when once it 
has been awakened. The evidence is increas- 
ing daily that men and women in all lands are 
catching the vision of what lies before them in 
the way of spiritual development, and are be- 
ginning to reach forth earnestly toward the 
great experience. It is this that makes us 
dare to believe that humanity is even now on 
the threshold of a new awakening in the realm 
of consciousness that will make inevitable the 
coming of the new age for the world. 

Because of the criticalness of the present 
hour, it would seem that there could be no 
other purpose in the pursuit of science, or 

89 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

philosophy, or religion, or business, or any- 
thing else that appeals to man, save the attain- 
ment of this higher consciousness. But it 
must needs be remembered that the unceasing 
practise of rites and ceremonies, of contempla- 
tion, renunciation, prayers, fasting, penance, 
devotion, adoration, abstemiousness or isola- 
tion to which many have had recourse, will not 
in and of themselves ensure the attainment of 
this state of consciousness. It is not a matter 
of bartering; there is no assurance that it will 
come as a reward for good conduct. 

"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and ye 
know not whence it cometh or whither it goeth. 
So is every one who is born of the Spirit." 
No golden promises of speedy entrance into 
this experience may be given the earnest 
seeker ; nor any exact rules, or laws of equation 
by virtue of which the goal may be reached. 
Nor yet may any time be specifically named in 
which the awakening may come either to the 
individual or the race. "The Son of Man 
cometh as a thief in the night. Therefore be 
ye ready." The "new birth" means nothing 
else than the rising of the Son of Man into 

90 



THE MEANING OF UNITY 

being within, as one awakens to this higher con- 
sciousness. 

Many, very many on earth to-day, are living 
so close to the borderland of the new birth that 
they frequently catch fleeting glimpses of the 
longed for freedom, but the full import of its 
meaning is withheld as yet. There is another 
veil, however thin, between them and the full- 
orbed Light. Buddha spent seven years in an 
intense longing and desire to attain that libera- 
tion which brought him at last to this conscious- 
ness. Jesus became a Christ only after pass- 
ing through the agonies of Gethsemane. The 
essential thing needed is patient desire and the 
expectant mood. 

Certainly the world's heart is filled to-day 
with an intense longing for something better, 
even though so many know not what it is they 
seek. If the inarticulate longings and un- 
formulated desires that fill so many minds and 
hearts, could but be centered, in the calm, con- 
fident and expectant mood, on the attainment 
of that sense of unity which is a realized fact 
in human consciousness, there is no question 
but that the new day would speedily dawn. 

91 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

In all spiritual writings we find the con- 
clusion that there is no one way by which the 
seeker may enter into this consciousness. But 
with singular unanimity, the seers of all ages 
agree, that while the form of the experience 
may differ, the pathway to the experience is 
ever and always the pathway of love, through 
contemplation of and desire for a more un- 
selfish, disinterested love. Whether this love 
be expressed in the awakening of the creative 
life, as in nature's spring time, or as the love 
of lover for his bride, or of mother for her 
child, or of the humanitarian for the suffering 
outcasts, or the love for an ideal forever in- 
accessible, or the love for some great Cause, 
the key that seemingly unlocks the door to the 
coming of the consciousness of spiritual one- 
ness with All, is Love, "the maker and mon- 
arch and saviour of all." 

This explains the supreme place given to 
Love by Jesus, in all his teachings, and his 
summing up of all the law and the prophets 
in the one new commandment of Love. He 
understood more clearly than all others that it 
is Love that breaks down all barriers, destroys 

92 



THE MEANING OF UNITY 

all partition walls, fills in all gulfs, wipes out 
all sense of separateness and isolation and that, 
therefore, makes possible as nothing else the 
awakening of the higher consciousness in man. 
It is this that makes him the Saviour Supreme 
of human life. 



9a 



CHAPTER V 

UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

"I sought for God 
But God eluded me; 
I sought my brother 
But I found him not; 
I found my Self 
And, finding, found all three."— A non. 

THE spirit of the new philosophy that is 
in process of formulation, in response to 
the imperative demand of the new age, is, then, 
the spirit of unity, finding expression in obedi- 
ence to its great ideal and seeking the applica- 
tion of its principle to all the relationships of 
life. It must be borne in mind constantly, 
however, that this is not a mere theoretical 
philosophy imposed from without, so much as 
it is an actual experience welling up from 
within, thus justifying the lofty dreams of all 
the prophetic souls of the past. 

More than twenty-five centuries ago the 

94 



UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, uttered the 
great truth that "man is a microcosm of God." 
In other words, what the universe is in the 
large, man is in the small. "Man is an epitome 
of the universe; he is a God in embryo." As 
we attempt the interpretation of this experi- 
ence of unity and seek the application of its 
principle to the various relations of life, it is 
most fitting, therefore, that we should begin 
with the inner life of the individual; for it is 
clear that we shall never find that true unity 
in outer relations, until first of all we have 
achieved it within ourselves. 

Some years ago one of the well-known writ- 
ers of to-day contributed a series of articles 
to a leading publication, with the striking title, 
"The Girl with the Hundred Selves." With 
a keen knowledge of personal psychology, the 
writer portrayed most graphically the differ- 
ent, and oftentimes, contradictory selves that 
from time to time assumed the ascendency in 
her heroine's life. But the girl described in 
these articles is only typical of human nature 
as it is. We are, all of us, men or women of a 
"hundred selves," and to this more than to any 

95 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

other one cause is due the fact that our lives, 
for the most part, are so generally superficial, 
aimless and ineffective. In each one of us 
there is a strong self and a weak self, a brave 
self and a cowardly self, a thoughtful self and 
a careless self, an unselfish self and a selfish 
self, an aspiring self and a despairing self, a 
spiritual self and an animal self, and the list 
could be extended indefinitely. 

Now the simple fact is that most people, 
while they may be thoroughly familiar with all 
these various "selves" that at different times 
seem to be in control of their lives, have prac- 
tically no knowledge of their true self, which 
is never to be confused with these lesser 
"selves" they know so well. The first thing to 
be said of Personality, is that it is self-con- 
scious; and the strongest personalities are 
always those most truly and deeply self-con- 
scious. But what do we mean by "self -con- 
sciousness"? Certainly we do not mean the 
mere consciousness of these fleeting, surface 
"selves" that are in evidence one moment and 
gone the next, /^/-consciousness does not 
mean "selves 33 consciousness only. There is in 

96 



UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

every one of us a deeper Self, lying beneath 
these "hundred selves" we know so well, and 
the true or complete Personality is the one who 
has become clearly and habitually conscious of 
this deeper Self. 

Let us attempt to do a little real thinking 
about ourselves. We all know well enough 
what a "person' ' is until we begin seriously to 
think about the matter, and then we discover 
that it is not so easy to define a person as we 
thought; and when we make the attempt we 
are not quite sure as to what we mean by our 
definition. Let us, then, perform a simple act 
of introspection, for although the process of 
introspection, especially when it leads to the 
very roots of being, is not easy, still we need 
to remember that the Self is nearer and more 
penetrable than any other object of knowl- 
edge. 

Let us suppose ourselves viewing mentally 
any immediate feeling of which we may 
chance to be conscious. It may be some phys- 
ical pain like the tooth-ache, or some taste of 
sweetness, or a flash of light, or some emotion 
like love or fear, hope or despondency. In 

97 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

every such act of reflection, it is clearly evi- 
dent that the immediate feeling, whatever it 
may be, is not only an experience, it is also ex- 
perienced; it is not merely a feeling, but it is 
a feeling that is also felt. In other words, it 
is owned or possessed by something or some 
one. Now the owner is not another feeling, 
as some have contended, for then, that other 
feeling would in its turn need an owner, or 
some one who feels it. Hence, we must con- 
clude that there is the "I" that feels; and this 
"I," this "Ego," this "Owner," who is the true 
Self, can be distinguished, though not sepa- 
rated, from its various states and processes. 

Let us put this distinction in another way. 
The first essential in every form of mental 
activity is that there shall be the individual 
consciousness of the "I," who is always the 
Thinker of the thought, the Feeler of the feel- 
ing, the Doer of the act. We cannot perform 
any mental operation without the consciousness 
of this "I." All forms of thinking, feeling or 
willing depend upon the "I." You cannot es- 
cape, if you try, the "I am." It is always, "I 
think," or "I feel," or "I will." There^is al- 

98 



UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

ways the "I" behind every mental state, to 
which everything is referred, which partici- 
pates in every thought and feeling, and from 
which proceeds every effort of the will. 

But as soon as we begin to ask what this 
"I" is, that is always present in every form of 
mental activitv and from which we can never 
escape, we seem to find ourselves baffled. All 
attempts to explain or define the nature of this 
"I" seemingly fail. It is a Something that 
cannot be explained by mental processes and 
is known only by its presence in consciousness. 
Think as we will, we are inevitably brought 
back to our starting point, — "I am." The 
"I" is, like God; perhaps we shall come to see 
that it is God individualized in us. We are 
only sure now, that the "I" which is, is the 
Knower, the Thinker, the Doer, the Seer; it 
is the deepest essence of every mental state. 

The next fact to be noted in all forms of 
mental activity, is the presence in conscious- 
ness of the "secondary I," the alter-ego, or the 
"Me," as Professor James called it. This 
distinction may seem somewhat subtle, but a 
little consideration will make it plain. The es- 

99 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

sential difference is that the "I" is the Some- 
thing that knows, feels and wills, while the 
"Me" is that part of the self that is known to 
the "I," as mental states, feelings, thoughts 
and will-impulses. A man's body with its 
physical sensations is a part of his "Me," which 
may be examined, analyzed and ruled by his 
"I." His feelings, pains, pleasures, opinions, 
prejudices, inclinations, and all the rest of the 
mental things that he considers as a part of 
himself, are all portions of the "Me" ; for all of 
them may be considered, examined, changed 
and ruled by the "I." The "Me," in all its 
parts and phases, is always the "object" of 
contemplation by the "I"; and the "I" is al- 
ways the "subject" that contemplates the 
things of the "Me." You can never abso- 
lutely separate the two. 

We have found, then, a final, ultimate 
Something within ourselves that defies our 
powers of analysis. This "I" is what has been 
called the "pure ego." It is Something that 
is always present in consciousness, as that 
which is conscious, while the "Me" is simply a 
bundle of states of consciousness or things of 

100 



UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

which the "I" is conscious. The "I" is always 
the same, — always the "I," for other than it- 
self it cannot be. The "Me" is constantly 
changing and never the same. You can never 
think of your "I" as not being. You can never 
say, "I am not," nor can you even imagine 
your Self as not being. So long as you think 
of your Self, — the "I," — at all, you must ac- 
company the thought with the consciousness 
of being. Nor can you ever imagine your 
Self as being any other "I" than it is. You 
can think of it being surrounded with other 
"Me" aspects or objects, but you can never 
think of your "I" as being another "I." 

It may be objected that it makes no ma- 
terial difference to the individual whether he 
is able thus to distinguish between the "I" and 
the "Me," or not, — that he must live his life 
according to his nature in either case. It is 
just here that the whole crux of the problem 
lies for each individual. It is perfectly true 
he may live a kind of a life without ever stop- 
ping to distinguish between his real Ego and 
his lesser "selves," for this is the life that most 
people are living every day. But he can never 

101 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

live his truest life, that is, the life that is the 
actual expression of his true, deep, inner Self, 
until he reaches the point in his development 
where he does make this distinction, clearly 
and habitually. 

This is the secret of the comparative failure 
of most lives to measure up to their full pos- 
sibilities in mental achievements, in moral 
character or in spiritual development. How 
few are the men and women who are not 
haunted continually by the feeling of how far 
short they come of what, in their inmost be- 
ings, they know they ought to be, and of what 
they know they might accomplish! How 
many a person realizes that his weakness and 
shortcomings are due to the fact that he seems 
to be forever working at cross-purposes within 
himself, struggling with conflicting impulses, 
contradictory desires or antagonistic aims ! If 
life involves the struggle without, how much 
more does it mean the constant struggle within, 
until one cries out with Paul, again and again : 
"The thing I do, I would not, and what I 
would not, that I do. Who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death ?" 

102 



UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

Surely, this all too-common experience in 
most lives need not continue year after year, 
as the constant source of sorrow and regrets 
and the cause of barriers in the way of one's 
true growth. There ought to be some way by 
means of which it can be transcended and 
passed beyond and left behind. What, then, 
is the trouble? In a word, it is because most 
men and women have never yet achieved that 
unity within themselves without which no life 
can ever be truly effective. And this lack of 
inner unity grows out of one's ignorance of 
his true Self, the real Ego, who stands back 
of all moods and impulses and conflicting de- 
sires. 

There is no gainsaying the fact that the only 
"self" with which most of us are acquainted is 
the "hundred selves" of our passing, fleeting 
moods, that are never the same from moment 
to moment, that possess no stability, no per- 
manency and, therefore, no reality We have 
scarcely ever even glimpsed the true Self, ex- 
cept in some occasional, crucial moment of 
life, and such glimpses have been so rare and 
imperfect that we would hardly recognize it 

103 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

again. The result is, that we actually live our 
daily lives, in all our thinking, feeling and 
actions, from these impermanent, surface 
"selves," instead of from the deep, imperisha- 
ble, unchanging Self within. 

Lacking this unity, the individual fails to 
stand before others as the true, consistent, 
steadfast, unified Self he might be, but appears 
to be a different self at different times, depend- 
ing on moods, impulses, times and seasons. 
He never impresses his fellows as a strong, 
clean-cut personality ; and his life, of necessity, 
lacks influence and power. And all because 
the only "self" he knows is the myriad "selves" 
of the "Me," the constantly changing states of 
consciousness; his true Ego he has never yet 
discovered. 

The realization of this true Ego in one's life, 
at once causes the individual to know that he 
is not merely what he thinks or feels or wills 
at the moment, but is rather the Something 
that thinks and feels and wills and, therefore, 
he may govern and control these mental ac- 
tivities, instead of being mastered or controlled 
by them. According to the popular concep- 

104 



UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

tion, a man is the creature and slave of his 
mental states ; but we have learned to-day that 
man may assume his rightful place on the 
mental throne, and make his own choice as to 
what feelings he may wish to feel, what 
thoughts he may wish to think and what things 
he may wish to do. ' , 

The true Personality has attained to inner 
unity, through the realization of the "I," to 
such a degree that he has become the Master, 
not the slave. He knows that the sovereign 
will of the individual resides in the Ego, and 
that all his mental states must obey its man- 
dates. Gradually he comes to know that the 
"I," his real Self, has at its command a won- 
derful array of mental powers which, if prop- 
erly used, may create for him any kind of a 
personality he desires. He reaches the sublime 
consciousness at length that his Ego is indeed 
the Master Workman, who can make of his 
life whatsoever he wills. But before one can 
reach this consciousness, he must enter into a 
deeper recognition of this wonderful Ego that 
he actually is. Remember, you are more than 
body, senses or mind. You are that mysteri- 

105 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

ous Something, the Master of all your inner 
powers and forces of every kind, of which the 
profoundest thing you can say is, "I am" 

This consciousness is the only sure basis of 
that self-confidence and self-reliance which 
alone make a personality strong and powerful 
and influential in the world. And it invar- 
iably leads to these desired results simply be- 
cause it alone brings about that unification of 
man's inner life for which he is always striving, 
and without which his life remains a super- 
ficial, divided, distracted and ineffective life. 
Sometimes this consciousness flashes into be- 
ing as the result of some great, crucial experi- 
ence; more often it is a gradual development. 
But, however it may come, it always involves 
the clear recognition of the distinction between 
the "I" and the "Me" in consciousness, the 
realization that behind all the changing "Me" 
states, there dwells the true Ego, the real Self, 
unchanging and permanent. When this ex- 
perience has been won, all things are possible 
in self-development. 

It needs to be clearly understood, however, 
that the rising into consciousness of the true 

106 



UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

Self, and the perception of its real nature and 
function, does not necessitate the obliteration 
of all the curious, individual selves that find 
expression at the surface of one's life; ob- 
viously, it does not mean that all our various 
moods are reduced to one standard mood, and 
that all our impulses are invariably methodical 
or our desires are always mathematically cor- 
rect. For that would be to reduce life to one 
drab, neutral shade. It would destroy all 
spontaneity, which is life's greatest charm, and 
take away its brightness and its surprises. It 
would tend to do away with the mysterious 
element in personality, without which life 
would lose its chief interest and zest. 

What it would mean, however, is that life 
would be lived consciously from its deep, true 
center rather than from its superficial surface ; 
that whatever kind of a self one might appear 
to be from outside, one would always know 
himself to be the true Self, finding expression 
for the moment in the vagrant self at the sur- 
face; that however varying the moods or im- 
pulses through which he might allow himself 
to wander, he would always come back to his 

107 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

true Self; in a word, that he would never lose 
his true Self in the "hundred selves" at the 
surface of life. 

The personal problem for every one is how 
to attain the clear consciousness of this true 
Self, and thus achieve actual unity in one's 
inner life. Let us make a few practical sug- 
gestions as to the method to pursue. In the 
first place, we must resolutely accustom our- 
selves to making this distinction between the 
"I" and the "Me" in our daily thinking. 
There are only two ways in which a theoretical 
fact can become a fact of consciousness: It 
can break into consciousness, as it were, sud- 
denly, as the result of some startling, crucial 
experience, in whose coming we have had noth- 
ing directly to do. But such experiences do 
not come to all of us and, fortunately, we do 
not have to wait for their appearance. The 
other way, is by our earnest, persistent think- 
ing the fact. By the law of suggestion, what 
we habitually think comes at length to take its 
actual place in consciousness. We may test 
this principle in everyday experience, and no 

108 



UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

mental exercise is more helpful in bringing the 
true Self into clearer consciousness. 

Take the body first, for example. Think 
of all the many despotic tyrannies exercised 
by our bodies over ourselves constantly. How 
can the Self be freed from these bodily tyran- 
nies? Remember your true relation to your 
body. The body is not you, but only your 
instrument for self-expression. I You do not 
need to be its daily victim, for you can and 
should be its master. *7 Remember also, that 
when you walk away from it and leave it be- 
hind, as it were, it will have to follow you, for 
it could have no existence apart from you; and 
in following you, it will gradually grow more 
obedient to your will, more harmonious to your 
thoughts, more responsive to your desires. 
The tyranny of the body over us is so strong, 
chiefly because we are always following it, in- 
stead of commanding it to follow us. So, 
quite deliberately and decisively, again and 
again during the day, leave your body a little 
behind, let it drop out of your throughts com- 
pletely. Forget for a while all about its im- 

109 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

perious demands for attention, its passions and 
appetites, its hungers and thirsts^ its aches and 
pains, its fatigue and weariness, its funny little 
needs and vanities. And as you thus go on 
ahead, paying no attention to the body what- 
ever, it will learn the truth and gradually catch 
up to you again, recognizing in you the true 
and dominant master. We have never yet be- 
gun to realize the extent to which the true Self 
can thus educate the body to do its will. It 
may be hard at first, because we have let our 
bodies rule us for so long; but by persistent 
practise we can attain to a new and joy-giving 
sense of freedom and become, in very truth, 
the masters of our bodies, through the recogni- 
tion in consciousness of the true nature of the 
Self. 

Similarly with our intellectual life. How 
many and varied are the tyrannies constantly 
exercised over us by our intellects! No man 
knows less about real freedom than the man 
who lives his life merely on the intellectual 
plane, for, as Bergson says, there is a deeper 
than intellect in man. Therefore, quite de- 
cisively and intentionally, day by day, leave 

110 



UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

your intellect for a time in abeyance. Forget 
all about its tyrannous thoughts and demands, 
its prejudices and superstitions, its strange lit- 
tle fears and fancies, its truths and errors, — 
the long legacy of ages of evolution. Leave 
them all behind and, slipping away from the 
only guide to truth that you, perhaps, have 
ever known as yet, dare to go your own way 
into the Unseen alone, feeling for the pathway 
by intuition and trusting the deepest instincts 
of your being. And some day, your slower 
and more conventional intellect will follow you 
through the shadows of half-truths, and catch 
up with you in that clearer light to which your 
intuition has led you. Only determine never 
to be bound absolutely by any of the con- 
clusions of your intellect, or be held back in 
your search for truth by any of the systems 
it may invent. For thus to bow down slav- 
ishly before your intellect, is to abdicate the 
true kingdom of your Self, and to miss forever 
the divine leadership of "the deeper than intel- 
lect in man." 

Thus it is with all external things, — money, 
clothes, comforts, luxuries, — harmless though 

111 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

they be in themselves; so with all objects of 
desire, — ambition, fame, applause, — good and 
satisfying as they may be; we must be free of 
them all. We must even learn to be free of 
persons whom we love, for even love must be 
possessed by the Self as master, if one's inner 
life is to know unity. 

The aim of such mental practise is not that 
we may become free from all these things or 
persons, and never have anything to do with 
them again; that would be asceticism, one of 
the most dreary and useless tyrannies that man 
has ever known; but rather, that we may be 
free of them, that they may not get in our way 
or impede our progress, — as the master work- 
man is free of his tools, — and so really possess 
them all for use and enjoyment. 

This habit of detachment and withdrawal 
from the things of life is the practical side of 
the process of deepening the true life center 
and bringing it more clearly into one's habitual 
consciousness. It is the old paradox of Jesus : 
the losing of life that we may find it; losing 
the shallow, feverish life at the surface that 
we may find the deeper, richer life within ; los- 

112 



UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

ing the divided, superficial "selves'' at the cir- 
cumference that we may find the true Self at 
the center in union with All. The discovery 
of this richer life within must, however, in- 
evitably tend to enrich the surface manifesta- 
tions as they appear to others without. 

That which we let go and leave behind is 
not lost, but found again in a new and more 
satisfying discovery. It is as if a man sat on 
a spur of the foot-hills, enjoying the scene 
spread out before him. The horizon may be 
narrow, but the landscape, dotted with stream 
and meadow and woods, is lovely and intimate 
and so captivating in its beauty that he feels 
well content to remain where he is and cannot 
imagine any scene more desirable. But after 
a time there comes the strange mystical de- 
sire, — so natural to human hearts, — to climb 
higher. So he rises, turns his back reluctantly 
on the dear familiar scene, and begins the fur- 
ther ascent. He lets all the beautiful scenery 
go and, literally, it drops away from him as 
he climbs; in a few moments it is lost to sight 
and sound. But when the new resting place 
on the heights is once attained, he finds to his 

113 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

delight that all he seemed to lose at first is 
given back to him, and in grander perspective, 
mightier setting and more sublime beauty. 

If we are to attain to inner unity, the self 
or "selves" to which we must die are the nar- 
row, delusive selves which are constantly com- 
ing into friction or antagonism with others, and 
becoming so entangled with the things of the 
external world that we lose the true perspec- 
tive of life, seeing it only in divided and sep- 
arate fragments, never in its wholeness. All 
that we lose in awakening to the true Self is 
this delusiveness and the perpetual slavery to 
outward circumstances that cause disunity 
among the surface selves. The view from the 
higher point includes all the views from the 
lower points. The happiness of the true Self 
includes, not excludes, all other possible de- 
lights. True unity embraces the lower as well 
as the higher kingdoms. The realization of 
this true unity within oneself gives to one for 
the first time the real possession of his body, 
the true mastery of his intellect and the actual 
knowledge of his essential being. 

The first steps, then, in the pathway to unity, 

114 



UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

in all its various aspects, lead inward toward 
the deeper regions of one's true Selfhood. On 
the outer side, this unity involves withdrawal 
from the circumference fretting and friction, 
the indifference to surface circumstances, the 
disentanglement from desires and things as 
such; and yet, it results in the leaving behind 
of nothing worth while, ^ for all things follow 
the one who has found himself.^ On the inner 
side, the end of the pathway is the union of all 
one's various "selves" in one's true Self, result- 
ing in inward harmony and peace, the effective 
realization of the wholeness of one's personal- 
ity, with the inevitable increase of power and 
influence with others. 

To realize this unity within yourself is the 
great end for which the universe has rolled 
hitherto. For this end, your life, possibly yet 
many lives, are lived; for this, death, perhaps 
many deaths may be necessary. Towards 
this, all your experiences, — desires, fears, 
struggles, failures, disappointments, successes, 
joys, sorrows, bewilderments, sufferings, re- 
grets, hopes, — must one day surely lead. To 
thus find one's true Self and so achieve unity 

115 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

within, one must be positive, not negative, ac- 
tive, not passive, optimist, not pessimist. The 
unified Self does not seek a deliverance out of 
life, but rather, a fuller deliverance into life; 
he does not disentangle himself from objects 
of desire in order to escape them, but rather 
that he may use and enjoy them with dignity 
and mastery. He seeks only to be free from 
the wheel of life that he may become the 
charioteer in the car. 

There is, therefore, no need for feverish 
hurry. All we require is strong faith, that is, 
patience combined with sure expectancy that 
"all is provided for," and that one day we shall 
surely find the Self we seek. Haste and ex- 
haustion belong to the surface life, not to the 
depths within. "The higher the velocity, the 
deeper the weariness ; but the tempo of the true 
life is always leisurely.' ' 

Whether we shall define this "I," or Ego, or 
true Self, as the "soul," or as "a center of con- 
scious energy in the World- Soul," or with 
Carlyle, as "a spark of the Divine," or with 
John Fiske, as "an emanation from the In- 
finite," or with Jesus, as "the child of God," 

116 



UNITY WITHIN ONESELF 

we shall consider in a subsequent chapter. It 
is sufficient now to know that this true Self 
may be discovered, realized and manifested to 
a degree undreamed of as yet by most of us. 



117 



CHAPTER VI 



man's unity with nature 



"One undivided Soul of many a soul 
Whose nature is its own Divine Control 
Where all things flow to all 
As rivers to the sea." — Shelley. 

FROM the time that man first began to 
think, he has constantly been seeking to 
relate himself more intelligently to the uni- 
verse in which he lives. In part, this has been 
forced upon him because of his dependence 
upon nature for life and sustenance; in part, 
because of his instinctive desire to explore all 
mysteries and find out the hidden meaning of 
things for himself. 

Out of this instinctive striving has grown 
all mythologies, theologies, philosophies and 
sciences, from earliest times down to the pres- 
ent. His interpretations of the universe have 
run the gamut from the first crude and childish 

118 






MAN'S UNITY WITH NATURE 

attempts, based on illusion and assumption, to 
the latest conclusions of modern science which 
we declare to be based only upon facts. 

The fascinating story of man's reading of 
the universe reveals how implicitly he has 
trusted his senses, and how many times his 
senses have deceived him. At the outset, 
primitive man regarded nature, on the whole, 
as hostile to his best interests; he saw it as 
filled with spirits both good and evil, though 
the evil forces seemed to be more numerous 
and more powerful than the good; therefore 
he lived in constant dread and fear of his uni- 
verse. 

To-day we know that nature is friendly, and 
that all her mighty forces are good when once 
we have learned how to obey and use them 
aright. Man has believed that nature stood 
over, as it were, separate and apart from man; 
and that man was a higher order of creation, 
brought into being by a special fiat of the 
Creator, distinctly different from all about 
him. We know to-day that man is but the last 
product in the stupendous process of evolution 
which has been at work from the beginning, 

119 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

and that he carries in his body, mind and char- 
acter the vestiges of that lower life out of 
which he has come; that his moral struggles 
grow out of the animalhood that still remains 
in him, and that even many of his "higher 
qualities," that mark him off as human, go 
back for their first faint beginnings to that 
which lies beneath him in the scale of ascend- 
ing life. 

Man once imagined that the earth was as 
flat as a table; but science proved that it was 
as round as an orange. He thought it w r as 
perfectly motionless; science proved that it 
spun around like a top, and swung around the 
sun at the rate of 67,000 miles an hour. The 
ancients believed that the world was a com- 
paratively small, compact affair, a sort of 
band-box universe; they thought the sun was 
a little body, several acres in extent, that 
circled around the big earth ; but science proved 
that the sun was a million times larger than 
the earth and 93,000,000 of miles distant, and 
that it was the earth that revolved around the 
sun once in every year. They thought that 
ours was the only solar system, but science dis- 

120 



MAN'S UNITY WITH NATURE 

covered millions of other such systems, most of 
them vastly larger than our own. 

These are only cases typical of many others, 
where science has dispelled the illusions of 
man's uneducated and uncritical mind and 
senses; and not merely corrected, but practi- 
cally and often diametrically contradicted the 
notions and inferences of his mind. Man has 
discovered, with the passing of time, that the 
reality was often the very reverse of what his 
uninstructed and uncritical mind and senses 
seemed to tell him. And what has been true 
of man's ideas about the universe, has been 
equally true of his ideas about life, about him- 
self, his fellows, his God, and the relations that 
bind all together. The plain fact is that il- 
lusion is written large over all man's past 
thinking along every line; and future discov- 
eries will correct and qualify and, in many in- 
stances, reverse both his past and present ideas 
of what is true. 

Before going any further, let us seek the 
reason why man's senses and superficial im- 
pressions, — his eyes, ears and feelings in gen- 
eral, — deceive him, as they certainly do, and 

121 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

render such deceptive and inadequate reports 
of the real nature of things around him as well 
as within him. One good reason is this : Man 
as a living organism is placed in an environ- 
ment filled with other organisms and things 
Which, like himself, are of a highly compound 
and re-compounded character. Man, phe- 
nomenally considered, is not a simple, but a 
compound and complex being; and all the be- 
ings and things in the material environment 
to which he must adapt and adjust himself and 
his actions, — which he must see, handle, strug- 
gle and interact with in numberless ways, are 
like himself, compound and complex beings 
and things also. As Prof. R. K. Duncan 
says : "Everything in the universe is a swarm 
of atoms, and every action in the universe is the 
action of one swarm of atoms upon another. " 
Now man's senses and intelligence have been 
developed in response to the active demands of 
his environment that he, as a living, striving 
and struggling organism, must adapt himself 
to, or else die in the attempt. Man as a mas- 
sive and compound being must learn to adapt 
and adjust himself to other massive and 

122 



MAN'S UNITY WITH NATURE 

compound beings and things. His eyes, in 
their construction, are massive eyes instead of 
microscopic, and so are all his other sense 
organs. He is, therefore, obliged to see and 
hear and feel things in the mass, in the large; 
and to get collective impressions and synthetic 
perceptions of things, instead of cellular, 
molecular, atomic, ionic or analytic visions and 
views of things. In other words, he is obliged 
to see everything, even himself, from the out- 
side, roughly and in the large; and so he can- 
not, by these massive, instead of delicate, 
senses, perceive the inner truth of things that 
lies beneath the surface. Thus, he is also 
obliged to handle and adjust himself to these 
things in the same rough, large and collective 
ways, rather than in any really fine or accurate 
way. 

Man needs to see his enemies, food, tools, 
weapons, etc., not as swarms of atoms and ions 
as they really are, but as collective and com- 
pact bodies and wholes; and so it necessarily 
happens that man's everyday knowledge, de- 
veloped as it has been for practical use and ad- 
justment and not primarily for theoretical 

123 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

truth, is wholly a knowledge of the collective 
impressions, composite pictures and synthetic 
perceptions of things. Such knowledge is not 
and cannot be perfectly true, even as regards 
the external, material and objective character 
and appearance of things ; while as regards the 
internal, spiritual and subjective nature of 
things, our senses are totally blind and give us 
no direct knowledge whatever. Even our per- 
ceptual knowledge is only a half -knowledge, at 
best. It is very incorrect, imperfect and il- 
lusionary in character, as we are constantly 
discovering ; and when men infer, as originally 
and naively they must, that things are actually 
what they seem to our practical but uncritical 
senses, they are woefully mistaken. 

Thus it is that the world of nature, as it has 
been perceived by man's senses, is a world of 
appearances and is filled with the greatest il- 
lusions. Man clearly needs, therefore, to sup- 
plement and correct his sensuous and per- 
ceptual knowledge by that profounder knowl- 
edge which is to be acquired only by scientific, 
philosophic and critical means, aided and in- 
spired also by his own intuitive faculty. Thus, 

124 



MAN'S UNITY WITH NATURE 

as the disillusioning of man's mind gradually 
goes on, the evolution of real knowledge slowly 
but surely proceeds. 

It may seem to the reader as if the forego- 
ing were only a useless digression; but if it 
serves to make somewhat clearer why it has 
always been man's tendency to see things and 
people in their seeming outer disunity, rather 
than in their true inner unity, it will have ful- 
filled its purpose. To enter into the conscious- 
ness of the unity that exists in nature and that 
binds man to nature, man must learn to use 
other faculties than those of his senses merely. 

Let it first be noted that the whole tendency 
and effort of modern science is a unifying one. 
Science is rapidly succeeding in demonstrating 
the unbroken oneness and perfect internal 
unity of the entire, all-inclusive being of the 
world, although it is true that the world is 
manifested to us in a multitude of infinitely 
varied and seemingly separate, individual 
forms. The universe is a perfect organic 
unity in an infinite variety of organic parts, 
including man; it is a unity in diversity. It 
is not a mere totality of many separate beings 

125 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

and things ; it is not a mere external union, nor 
a mere organization; but it is, instead, an in- 
tegrality, a perfect whole and an indivisible 
organism of Being. 

The discovery of the law of gravitation by 
Sir Isaac Newton, of the heliocentric astron- 
omy by Copernicus, of the laws of cosmic, 
solar and biological evolution by Darwin and 
Spencer, together with many other discoveries, 
have all gone to prove the perfect internal 
unity of the world and to show that it is in 
reality a true universe and not a duiverse, 
pluriverse or multiverse of any kind. It was 
named "a universe/' and the name has turned 
out to fit the fact, as an earlier age could not 
imagine. It has never been seriously chal- 
lenged, even by the pluralists. Thus Profes- 
sor James says, in "The Pluralistic Universe," 
that his pluralistic world is a real universe, 
partly if not perfectly, connected into a uni- 
tary whole. "Our 'multiverse' still makes a 
'universe,' " he says. The whole tendency of 
science from the beginning has been to discover 
and demonstrate the perfect internal unities, 
continuities and interconnections of things, in 

126 



MAN'S UNITY WITH NATURE 

place of their seeming and superficial disuni- 
ties, disconnections and discontinuities. 

Within the last few years a profoundly sig- 
nificant discovery has been made in the fields 
of chemistry and physics. It is that of the 
corpuscular, electrical and ethereal constitu- 
tion of all matter and energy. Up to quite 
recently it had seemed that there were about 
80 ultimate and basic elements; and that the 
world, so far as science could prove, had been 
made out of these 80 or more different kinds 
of fundamental matter. Philosophical think- 
ers, as far back as ancient India and Greece, 
down through Spinoza and Goethe to Spencer 
and Haeckel, had believed, however, that there 
must be in the last analysis but one kind of 
matter and but one body of matter. This was 
a purely logical and metaphysical idea; it had 
never been experimently proved by exact 
science. But now many of the leading scien- 
tists believe that it has been so proven, and that 
there are not 80 odd different kinds of ulti- 
mate matter in the world, but one, and only one. 
As Professor Duncan again says: "The need 
felt by men of science, of reducing the physical 

127 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

universe to a condition of oneness, of finding 
some one thing out of whose properties or 
qualities might proceed all that is," has seem- 
ingly been realized at last. 

To quote a recent writer: "What happens 
to the universe during the stupendous process 
of cosmic evolution is not a loss of its original 
ethereal oneness, but the gain of a higher, 
nobler and more organic oneness. It ex- 
changes and transforms its simple, featureless 
and monotonous unity for a complex, feature- 
ful and infinitely rich and varied unity. It 
transforms its sleepy, subconscious and dreamy 
state of being for its wide-awake, self-conscious 
and self-critical state, in which its spiritual 
potentialities are expressed and manifested in 
a multitude of highly individualized and per- 
sonalized forms, like the human beings of this 
earth. As the roses are to the rose-bush, as 
the eyes, ears and brain are to the organism, 
so the human intelligences on this earth, and 
the other similar intelligences on other planets, 
are to the whole cosmic organism of the world. 
They are its eyes with which it sees itself, and 
they are its minds with which it knows itself, — 

128 



MAN'S UNITY WITH NATURE 

and knows itself to be divine, or else nothing, 
no matter how great or tragic it may be to be 
divine." 

It is to some such sublime conception of the 
unity that pervades all nature, including man, 
that science is bringing us to-day. And when 
we turn to modern philosophy, we find that it, 
too, is moving in the same direction. Building 
on these recent discoveries of science it helps 
us to see that the human mind is a function 
not merely of the human organism; it is, with 
equal and even greater truth, a function of 
the whole cosmic organism. As man's brain 
and mind have been developed out of his bodily 
and mental organism as a whole, and in es- 
sential correspondence with it, so in the same 
way, man as a whole and his mind have been 
developed out of the body and mind of nature, 
and in essential correspondence with it. 

In man, the universe as a vast cosmic organ- 
ism becomes self-conscious and aware of itself. 
Our human consciousness is nature's cosmic 
consciousness, individualized in us. Our hu- 
man intelligence is nature's cosmic intelligence, 
expressing and manifesting itself through us 

129 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

as through its brains and minds. Our minds 
are not our minds only; they are in a real and 
deeper sense the minds of the Cosmos, and as 
such, they must be in essential unity with it. 
As Professor Hoffding says: "In the prin- 
ciple of unity we have a thought which is con- 
clusive for us. . . . Philosophy accepts the 
unity as a necessary presupposition of the in- 
terconnection of the manifold. . . . The prin- 
ciple of unity is a necessary presupposition, if 
we are to understand Being." 

It may rightly be urged, however, that this 
conception of man's unity with all-that-is, as 
set forth by modern science and philosophy, is 
purely an intellectual conception, and does not 
necessarily lead to a genuine consciousness of 
one's inner unity with nature, which is the end 
really sought. This is perfectly true. The 
scientist who devotes his entire life to discover- 
ing the facts that make for the conception of 
unity, may never have entered into the con- 
sciousness itself ; while on the other hand, many 
an unscholarly man or woman, in perfect 
ignorance of the scientific facts, may be liv- 
ing daily in the deep consciousness of the 

130 



MAN'S UNITY WITH NATURE 

unity existing between themselves and nature. 
(Nevertheless, we must remember that it is 
by persistently thinking a fact that we event- 
ually take it out of the realm of mere intel- 
lectual theory and make it a fact of conscious- 
ness.^ 7 This is why we have devoted the space 
to setting forth the conception of our unity 
with nature that is held by thoughtful minds, 
in order that we may begin to think correctly 
of the closeness of the relation existing between 
nature and ourselves; and in time, we shall 
come to experience the unity that now, per- 
haps, we simply hold in our minds as a the- 
oretical truth. 

The great poets of all ages are our real 
guides into this experience, even more truly 
than the scientists and philosophers, as they 
seek to express through their art the things 
they have seen and heard and felt in the world 
of nature. Through intuition, rather than 
through any reasoning process, they have 
pierced to the real secrets of nature and felt 
their oneness with the All. How many souls 
there are that have responded instinctively to 
the truth in Shelley's beautiful lines : 

131 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

"The One remains, the many change and pass; 
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly." 

Or who, that has learned to love Words- 
worth, has not quoted many times softly to 
himself, when alone with nature, the well- 
known lines : 

"And I have felt 
A Presence that disturbs me with a joy 
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime 
Of something far more subtly interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and, in the mind of man, 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts 
And rolls through all things." 

The friends of Walt Whitman tell us that 
one of his favorite pastimes was to stroll 
leisurely out of doors, through the fields or 
under the trees or along the beach, looking in- 
tently at the grass or flowers, or at the rustling 
leaves overhead, or at the waves as they rolled 
in and broke at his feet. They say that he al- 
ways seemed to see and hear far more in na- 
ture than the rest of us. He used to say 
himself that he "loved to hear the grass grow." 

132 



MAN'S UNITY WITH NATURE 

Thoreau, who lived alone in his little hut 
on the shores of Walden Pond, through his 
patient observance and his deep sympathy with 
nature in all her varying moods, became so 
familiar with times and seasons that he was 
able to tell almost to a day when the leaves of 
the different trees would begin to turn in the 
autumntide. So the lifelong study of John 
Burroughs, both as a scientist and as a lover of 
nature, has enriched the world immeasurably 
by a wealth of insights into nature's deeper 
meaning. 

Few have walked through nature with 
clearer eyes or greater powers of accurate ob- 
servation than did John Ruskin. And he has 
enabled us to see in the cloud formations over- 
head, in the mountain stream and in tree and 
flower, beauties and meanings that our duller 
powers of perception have never even 
glimpsed. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his little but 
weighty volume entitled "Nature," has re- 
vealed with true poetic insight the deeper laws 
of nature's unity to all who have eyes to see 
and hearts to understand. And Richard Jef- 

133 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

fries, true rhapsodist that he was, in his unique 
volume, "The Story of My Heart," makes us 
feel something of the deep and wondrous mean- 
ing that nature possessed for him. As we see 
him lying prone upon the grass, trying in vain 
to give expression to the greatness of the pas- 
sion he feels for his mother earth, we cannot 
fail to envy his capacity for entering into such 
complete and perfect unity with the world of 
nature, of which he knows himself to be such a 
vital part. 

But apart from the aid that we may derive 
from these who, through love and insight, have 
penetrated so deeply into nature's heart and 
found themselves one with her, there is one's 
own personal experience with nature. There 
is scarcely any one who does not stand in awe 
and reverence before the calm majesty of a 
sunrise or the exquisite beauty of the sunset, 
the mystery of the starry night or the never 
ending fascination of the restless sea, the 
sublimity of the mountains or the delicate 
grace of the violet. It is not only the aesthetic 
sense in man that is thus appealed to; it is 
something more than just the sense of beauty 

134 



MAN'S UNITY WITH NATURE 

that is so deeply stirred by these wonders in 
nature. The depths that are stirred by such 
sights, in even the least educated soul, is the 
clear proof of a something within, recognizing 
and responding to a kindred something with- 
out. If it is true that Truth is Beauty and 
Beauty is Truth, then the sense of beauty that 
so uplifts the soul in man is also the sense of 
truth, — that deeper truth of his fellowship and 
unity with nature that he always experiences 
at such times, even though he may not be able 
to put into speech all he feels and knows. 

Among contemporary writers, there is no 
one who expresses so subtly and yet so power- 
fully this sense of unity with nature as Al- 
gernon Blackwood. It is evident that he has 
accepted Fechner's theory of the "earth spirit," 
and testing it out in his own remarkable ex- 
perience has made it the basis of many of his 
most striking stories. To many people these 
stories are quite meaningless, but to a large 
number of thoughtful readers they make a 
tremendously strong appeal. With all due al- 
lowance for the story-teller's instinct, they are 
profoundly suggestive of the inner psychic and 

135 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

spiritual forces that, for all we know to-day, 
may be operating in the various forms of na- 
ture, and exerting upon us humans far more 
influence than we have as yet realized. 

His stories of the spirit in the trees, the 
wind, the fire, the water, the sand; his weird 
interpretations of many ancient rites that pos- 
sess little or no significance for modern minds ; 
his suggestions of the psychic powers of cer- 
tain animals, like the dog and cat; and, above 
all, the sense of reality with which the stories 
are infused — all tend to create the impression 
in the reader's mind that the author is writing 
out of experiences that have made him feel and 
know a vastly closer connection between nature 
and man than most of us know anything about. 
He also makes one feel that, by close and 
patient observation, through quiet brooding 
and sympathetic communion, and especially, 
through loving insight, any one may discover 
for himself that closer fellowship with nature, 
that sense of unity with all-that-is. 

It is significant that those who have been 
born and bred close to nature's heart, or those 
who have spent much time in the solitudes of 

136 



MAN'S UNITY WITH NATURE 

nature, seem often to possess an almost mysti- 
cal sense of the close ties and intimate relations 
binding them to nature, such as is rarely found 
among city dwellers. It would seem as though 
our conventional rows of houses and lofty sky- 
scrapers and paved thoroughfares and clang- 
ing cars shut civilized man away from that 
closer sympathy with nature which was so char- 
acteristic of earlier man. 

But perhaps some reader will say: Why 
should we seek this sense of unity with nature ? 
What is the practical value of this conscious- 
ness of our oneness with the world of things 
about us? Why not be content with seeking 
what unity we may among our fellows ? Why 
not get all the enjoyment we can out of the 
nature we perceive through our senses, without 
seeking to penetrate to any deeper inner mean- 
ings? 

Our answer to these questions is first : That 
all the great souls who stand forth as having 
entered profoundly into the consciousness of 
the meaning of the principle of unity and who 
have realized the ideal most fully in their own 
lives, have given expression to their sense of 

137 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

oneness with the world of nature. To them 
it has been the evident source of fresh courage 
and new inspiration for life's tasks. It has 
poured streams of healing into their souls, 
when weary or discouraged. It has furnished 
vital illumination for their problems. But, 
deeper still, it has seemed to be the inseparable 
accompaniment of the experience of oneness 
with their fellows and with God. It is safe 
to say that no one has ever become profoundly 
conscious of his unity with God, without ex- 
periencing his oneness with the world that he 
knows to be God's world. 

But beyond this, the one who has attained 
to unity within himself, instinctively reaches 
out after a similar unity with that which is 
without. One of the sure evidences that he 
has found unity within is that he is seeking it 
without. For the true Self that he has discov- 
ered, and upon the finding of which depends 
his inner unity, is always one with the World- 
Self, that thrills and throbs and pulsates in all 
of nature's manifestations. Therefore, the 
true Self must press on to experience its unity 
with the world in which it dwells. 

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MAN'S UNITY WITH NATURE 

Finally, the experience of one's unity with 
nature makes possible the sense of "being at 
home in the universe," which, as no words can 
fully describe, gives to the inner life the feel- 
ing of calm confidence, of quiet peace, of rest- 
ful power. Such an one knows himself to be 
in his own place. Time and space make little 
difference, for he knows that all things belong 
to him by right and that, sooner or later, his 
own will surely come to him. All fear and 
distrust, all hesitancy or timidity vanish into 
the background forever, and he faces all out- 
ward conditions with perfect trust and habit- 
ual courage. He has learned that the entire 
universe is his own vast domain, even as he 
belongs to nature as one of her vital and in- 
dispensable parts. 

To thus find one's true Self, and to know 
that Self as being at home in a universe that is 
eternal, is to conquer time and sense, and to 
transcend even death itself. 



139 



CHAPTER VII 



man's unity with his fellows 



"The heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of 
his and mine ceases. He is mine, I am my brother, and my 
brother is me." — Emerson. 

IF the new psychology is helping man to ex- 
plore the hidden depths of his own being, 
and achieve inner unity by the discovery of the 
true Self that stands back of all his kaleido- 
scopic selves, the new social movement is just 
as surely turning his attention outward toward 
his fellows everywhere, and forcing him to 
study seriously the relations he sustains to 
them. Just as earnestly as he is seeking real- 
ity within, is he seeking reality in these social 
relations without. As all men are striving, 
more or less clearly, to attain a unity within 
themselves, even so they are endeavoring to 
find a unity with their fellows that does not 
now exist. 

The social movement in all its various 
phases, which, on the surface, is seeking to 

140 



MAN'S UNITY WITH HIS FELLOWS 

bring a larger measure of justice into all our 
social life, is nevertheless, at bottom, a striving 
to find and establish a deeper unity in the life 
of mankind. Any new social order that may 
come to have its place in the world, if it is to 
register genuine progress, must be based upon, 
and must steadily seek to foster and develop, 
a larger measure of social unity. We shall 
consider later the application of the principle 
of unity to the larger life of society as a whole ; 
for the present, let us think of it as it binds 
individual men and women to other individuals 
throughout the world. 

At first glance, the thing that impresses us 
is the many differences that exist between in- 
dividuals in the race, in the nation, in the com- 
munity and even in the same household. Men 
are divided politically, by wide divergencies of 
conviction and by party affiliation, and the 
tendency is for each to see little good in the 
other's views. In religion, men are separated 
by different faiths, diverse creeds, and many 
rival sects. 



c 



"So many gods, so many creeds, 
So many paths that wind and wind. 

141 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

Socially, men are widely divided by class con- 
sciousness, never so intense as to-day, — by 
wealth, clothes, manners and all that goes to 
make up one's social standing in the commun- 
ity. Intellectually, men are at all stages of 
development and are possessed of all degrees 
of education and training, from the "ignorant 
foreigner" to the cultivated and polished uni- 
versity scholar. Differences in moral ideals 
and attainments separate people into all 
phases of the so-called good and bad. In ad- 
dition, there are all the innumerable differences 
in individual tastes, peculiarities, dispositions, 
temperaments, that tend to divide men and 
women from one another. 

Out of all these differences that exist be- 
tween people grow the mutual animosities and 
antagonisms, the prejudices and dislikes, the 
envies and jealousies, the bitternesses and 
hatreds that inevitably destroy even the sem- 
blance of unity that might seem to exist. 
Nearness in space does not seem to overcome 
these differences, for oftentimes those living 
under the same roof are most widely separated 
from each other. The relation of husband and 

142 



MAN'S UNITY WITH HIS FELLOWS 

wife that, in its ideal sense, symbolizes the 
highest type of unity, often only serves to fur- 
ther accentuate the differences that divide ; for 
there are no separations so deep or wide as the 
separations in spirit. 

COne of the most solemnly mysterious facts 
of life is that every individual in this world 
stands alone; he lives his life alone and at last 
he must die aloneo Just as no two atoms ever 
really touch each other, even in the most com- 
pact of substances, so no two individuals ever 
completely touch each other, no matter how 
closely they may be thrown together. Even 
in the most nearly perfect union of man and 
woman, there are always some reserves, some 
barriers, something withheld. How many 
times have devoted parents suffered over the 
reserves that seemed to come between them and 
their children ; how many a friendship has been 
shadowed for the same reason! Let any one 
reflect upon his circle of friends and then ask 
himself the question : With how many of these 
friends do I find myself in complete unity? 
In every friendship there must be some com- 
mon points of contact, but there are also great 

143 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

differences ; and while it is true that the differ- 
ences often help to form and preserve the 
friendship, their presence, nevertheless, proves 
the absence of real unity, at least on the sur- 
face. No true conception of unity between 
people can ignore this fundamental character- 
istic of the individual, — that in his deepest life 
he seems to stand alone ; this is what constitutes 
his individuality. 

Upon more careful reflection, however, we 
come to perceive that these differences, in spite 
of all the friction and heart-ache, the strife 
and bitterness which they engender, are, after 
all, more superficial than deep, and grow out 
of accidental rather than essential features in 
human nature. Underneath all these many 
differences which we allow to separate us so 
sadly, there is a unity that binds all individuals 
into one great Whole, a oneness in which ra- 
cial, national and individual differences exist 
and always will exist, but which may serve not 
to separate and divide, but to unite all in the 
larger service of the good of the Whole. Is 
this deeper unity grounded in fact, or is it, as 
might well appear to-day, only a beautiful 

144 



MAN'S UNITY WITH HIS FELLOWS 

theory? Let us look more deeply beneath the 
surface of our divided life. 

The essential fact in human history as we 
read it to-day is the slow awakening of the 
sense of unity, the gradual unfolding of a feel- 
ing of community between men, nations and 
races, the dawning possibility of cooperation, 
of undreamed of collective powers, of a com- 
ing synthesis of the human species, of the 
eventual development of a common general 
ideal, a common universal purpose for human- 
ity as a whole, out of all the present chaotic 
confusion. The struggles and bloodshed of 
all the past have proved the duty and also the 
right of every individual to be not another, but 
himself. But t at last we are beginning to 
realize that one's individual existence is not so 
entirely cut off as it seemed at first, that one's 
entire separate individuality is but one of the 
many subtle illusions of the human mind. 

"Between you and me as we bring our minds 
together, and between us and the rest of man- 
kind there is something, something real, some- 
thing that rises through us and is neither you 
nor me, that comprehends us, that is thinking 

145 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

here, and is using us to play against each other 
in that thinking." This is no mere poetical 
statement; it is literal truth. We, you and I 
and every one, are not only parts in a thought 
process, but parts of one universal flow of life 
and blood. 

From the biological view-point, the unity of 
mankind is scientifically true. The scholars 
are agreed to-day that the human race, with 
all its various differentiations, goes back ulti- 
mately to one common source. The cradle of 
the race is now supposed to have been in the 
ancient land of India, somewhere in the vicin- 
ity of the Himalaya Mountains. From that 
source, through prehistoric times, early peo- 
ples wandered to and fro, extending their 
migrations ever farther and farther, and reach- 
ing even the western world, — as witness the 
ancient ruins in Central America. 

The differences that exist to-day between 
the various races of men, — differences in 
language, in government, in religion, in dress, 
in manners and customs, grew up gradually 
through a long period of time, and are due 
primarily to differences in environment, cli- 

146 



MAN'S UNITY WITH HIS FELLOWS 

mate, soil, food, etc., as these primitive peoples 
became separated farther and farther from 
each other. But, in spite of all these differ- 
ences, developed through thousands and thou- 
sands of years, the biological basis of humanity 
is one; the same blood flows in all our veins. 

With the evidence that we have of the wide 
wanderings of prehistoric tribes, and remem- 
bering the ceaseless movements of peoples to 
and fro on the earth's surface during historic 
times, with the inevitable intermarriage of in- 
dividuals from different tribes and races con- 
stantly taking place, we realize how baseless 
is the idea that there is to-day any such thing 
as an essentially distinct or separate race. As 
one of America's foremost anthropologists 
said in a recent address: "The world has 
nothing to fear, biologically, from the inter- 
marriage of the races, for the simple reason 
that the races have long since become hope- 
lessly mixed." 

The longer one lets his imagination play 
upon the incalculable drift and soak of the 
world's population, the more clearly one real- 
izes the tremendous fact of the biological one- 

147 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

ness of humanity as a whole, regardless of all 
racial and national names which we still em- 
ploy to separate peoples from one another. 
Thus, from this strictly scientific point of view, 
our individualities, our states and nations and 
races are but "bubbles and clusters of foam 
upon the great stream of the blood of the hu- 
man species, incidental experiments in the 
growing knowledge and consciousness of the 
race." 

When we study the intellectual achieve- 
ments of the various races and nations, we are 
profoundly impressed with the essential like- 
mindedness of all men. So long as there were 
no easy means of communication between dif- 
ferent portions of the globe and men and na- 
tions lived, of necessity, separated lives, each 
group naturally worked out its particular 
problems in its own way. It is thus that the 
ideals of government, of social and economic 
systems, of sciences and philosophies and the 
arts, of morals and religions, were originally 
developed ; each separate nation or race slowly 
working out its ideals, theories and general 
systems of knowledge independently, as if 

148 



MAN'S UNITY WITH HIS FELLOWS 

there were no other races or nations in the 
world. 

To-day, with our modern transportation 
facilities, our cable and radio service, the 
tremendous growth of travel between different 
countries, however widely separated, the in- 
terchange of literatures and the vast extension 
of commerce and trade, we realize how this old 
barrier of simple ignorance of one another has 
been torn away; and we have discovered that, 
all unconsciously, these different races and na- 
tions of men have been working out their 
separate destinies along essentially the same 
lines and toward practically the same great 
ends. Some, to be sure, for obvious reasons 
have been moving more rapidly, some have 
made greater progress and approached more 
nearly their ideals than have others; but all 
have been moving along the same general lines 
of development. 

All men, however isolated, have confronted 
the same universe of mystery, have faced the 
same problems of human existence, have re- 
flected upon the same experiences of the inner 
consciousness; and whatever the differences in 

149 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

the forms of the conclusions at which they have 
arrived, the content of those conclusions has 
been the same for all men. The human mind, 
the whole world round, is one; its activities 
everywhere conform to the same laws of mind ; 
its powers, given the same opportunities and 
an equal time for development, are practically 
the same for all. 

Politically, the world is moving rapidly to- 
day toward democracy, and mankind is pretty 
well convinced that some form of self-govern- 
ment is the ideal government to be attained by 
all nations, just as soon as the people are capa- 
ble of self-government. 

If Science be "the systematized body of 
ascertained knowledge," then there can be, in 
the nature of the case, but one scientific system 
for the world. We cannot conceive of a 
Chinese science, or a German science, or a 
Russian science, or an American science. 
Science, in just so far as it is science, must be 
one, — a World Science. 

While the external forms of the art of dif- 
ferent peoples have varied widely, in poetry, 
in music, in painting, in sculpture, — still we 

150 



MAN'S UNITY WITH HIS FELLOWS 

recognize that the fundamental principles out 
of which true art always springs are the same 
for the world. 

In the same way, though perhaps more grad- 
ually, we are beginning to see that all the past 
systems of philosophy have but been preparing 
the way for the coming of a world philosophy, 
in which the truths of the many various sys- 
tems of thought may be comprised in a new 
and universal synthesis, — even a World Phil- 
osophy. 

The comparative study of the world's great 
literature reveals the same like-mindedness, — 
the same outreachings toward truth and 
beauty, the same heart-hungerings for love and 
goodness. Even the forms of these different 
literatures, — poetry and prose, drama and fic- 
tion, — are essentially similar. 

The recent science of Comparative Relig- 
ions also reveals the same underlying unity in 
morals and religion of all peoples, as we shall 
see more at length in a subsequent chapter. 
It is this recognition that in the realm of the 
intellectual, moral and spiritual achievements 
of men there is an essential oneness, a world- 

151 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

life, in which all mankind participates and to 
which all men have contributed and must con- 
tribute, that not only constitutes the psycho- 
logical basis of unity between men, but is 
rapidly drawing all nations into an ever closer 
unity that must lead eventually to an actual 
fellowship of humanity. 

Still another phase of the psychological basis 
for the oneness of humanity is found in the 
fact that all men, regardless of race or nation, 
seem to be capable of indefinite development, 
and along the same lines, both mental and 
moral. John G. Paton, the Apostle to the 
New Hebrides, demonstrated in a lifetime of 
singular devotion, the possibility of transform- 
ing the cannibal natives of the South Sea Is- 
lands into civilized beings, with not only all the 
capacities of, but the ambitions for, intellectual 
and moral development. Bishop Hannington 
revealed the same possibilities among the sav- 
ages of Africa. 

We watch the children of the immigrants as 
they stream from the steerage of the vessels 
at Ellis Island. They come from every land 
under the sun; they represent the most back- 

152 



MAN'S UNITY WITH HIS FELLOWS 

ward as well as the most advanced races ; their 
language is strange, their dress is peculiar, the 
color of their skin is different. They come 
from countries where for centuries their an- 
cestors have lived in ignorance, perhaps 
ground down beneath the heel of tyranny. 

But give these same children five or ten 
years in our public schools, and then note the 
change. They not only catch up to and keep 
pace with our American-born boys and girls, 
but in many instances they outstrip them, 
carrying off the honors in college and uni- 
versity, and filling positions of usefulness, re- 
sponsibility and leadership in all walks of life 
as they reach years of maturity. The brilliant 
students from India, China, Japan, Syria and 
other lands, who in recent years have distin- 
guished themselves at Harvard, Yale, Colum- 
bia, Cornell and other American and English 
universities, prove the same possibilties for de- 
velopment among these oriental races. 

Or, take the so-called incorrigible bad boys 
who seem to many to stand outside the pale of 
normal human nature, until one day there 
comes along a Judge Ben Lindsey who, with 

153 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

sympathetic insight and love, takes these "bad 
boys" to his home, becomes their counselor and 
friend, and proves the possibility of upright, 
useful citizenship in even the "bad boy." 

The confirmed criminal, apparently hope- 
less, turns out to be no exception when a 
Thomas Mott Osborne begins to treat him as 
a man, worthy of confidence and respect; or a 
Madeleine Doty does the same for the female 
offender. 

From the psychological view-point, all men 
are far more alike than they are different, if 
only one can see beneath the surface differences 
of their lives. And all, even the apparent ex- 
ceptions, are susceptible of indefinite develop- 
ment and along the same general lines. It is 
here indeed that we find profound evidence for 
the idea of unity, of human oneness, of the 
solidarity of mankind. 

But it may justly be claimed that these facts, 
while frankly admitted by all intelligent peo- 
ple, leave one cold and unmoved ; they may im- 
press the intellect, but they fail to grip the 
heart ; they do not, in and of themselves, induce 
in us the consciousness of unity with our fel- 

154 



MAN'S UNITY WITH HIS FELLOWS 

lows that we really seek. It is the old dis- 
tinction once again between a theoretical fact 
and one that has become a fact of conscious- 
ness. If our sense of unity with other in- 
dividuals is to become not only an intellectual 
fact to be discussed, but an experience to be 
felt and lived and loved, then something more 
is needed. Where shall we find it? 

Let us recall our previous discussion of the 
nature of the true Self. If it be true that back 
of the "hundred selves" that find expression at 
the surface of my life, changing, fleeting, im- 
permanent, there is a deeper Self that consti- 
tutes the real "I" in me, unchanging and per- 
manent, then the same great fact is equally true 
of all men. The disunity exists in my personal 
life only because I have never yet discovered 
this true Self within, to which all the other 
lesser "selves" should be subordinated and 
which they all may obey. 

In just the same way, the disunity, or the 
"differences" that I see in my fellows, dividing 
them from one another and separating them 
from me, arise from their "hundred selves" at 
the surface, and not from the real Selves that 

155 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

lie deep within them all. The differences that 
divide belong to human surfaces, not to hu- 
man centers. And the fact that all these dif- 
ferences seem to be in evidence most of the 
time, causing all the myriad forms of friction 
and strife between men and nations, only goes 
to show that most men are as yet living their 
lives from the surface rather than from the 
true center. 

We have seen that unity cannot mean same- 
ness or identity; it cannot ignore the unique- 
ness of each Self. We can conceive of two 
Selves going through exactly the same experi- 
ences, looked at from without, and yet we know 
that these same experiences would never mean 
just the same to these different Selves. I can- 
not only say, "I am I, and no one else"; but 
there is a deep sense in which I can say, "I am 
I and like no one else." i Each Self, then, may 
with truth be said to be a center of unique in- 
terestrj 

We are like spectators in a theater. Each 
of us views the same universe; but each gazes 
on the wonderful spectacle from his own par- 
ticular seat in the theater, as it were ; and there- 

156 



MAN'S UNITY WITH HIS FELLOWS 

fore, each sees it from his own unique point 
of view; and consequently, to none of us does 
it appear exactly the same as it does to the 
rest. This uniqueness of the individual must 
be kept clearly in mind. But this is not to 
predicate of the Self any absolute or essential 
difference in nature from all other Selves. 
The uniqueness exists, but in a deeper lying 
unity which by some means we must learn to 
grasp. 

As we probe still deeper the mystery of the 
Self, while we admit that, on the surface, finite 
selves do appear to stand to each other in this 
relation of mutual exclusiveness, we find that 
the experience of every Self is included in a 
larger experience, that each Self is a part of 
a Greater Self. This brings us to the very 
heart of the truth. No other view is possible 
than that the true Self in each individual is a 
form under which Reality, or the Life-Prin- 
ciple, or God, finds expression; then, each Self 
is not only unique in itself, but is also, on this 
very account, a unique appearance in a finite 
center of the underlying Reality that "rolls 
through all things." Thus we are forced to 

157 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

admit that, in their deepest essence, all beings 
are One Being, and all individual Selves are 
One Self; and there are no such things as 
private, separate, exclusive, individual beings 
or selves, save in our false and illusory think- 
ing. 

The ignorance of this one fact, that in our 
true Selfhood we are one with all others, and 
that only on the surface of our lives are we in 
any sense divided, is no trivial or unimportant 
distinction; on the contrary, it is of the pro- 
foundest importance, as any one can see by 
reading the past and present history of the 
race. It is the fountain-head of all forms of 
cold-blooded selfishness, — envy, anger and 
hate; of all pride, vanity, conceit and contempt 
for others; of all injustice, greed, cruelty and 
crime; of all beliefs in the superiority of one- 
self and the inferiority of others. 

"Man's inhumanity to man makes countless millions mourn." 

And the clear and simple reason is because 
men have always imagined that they were 
private, separate selves ; that they lived private, 
separate lives; had private, separate exist- 

158 



MAN'S UNITY WITH HIS FELLOWS 

ences; and would have private, separate fates 
and destinies. 

This is the great illusion, the monstrous 
superstition that has created all the disunity in 
the world since time began, and that will yet 
make a veritable hell of earth, unless it can be 
banished forever by man himself. Men are 
not private, separate beings; they do not and 
cannot live private and separate lives, however 
they may deceive themselves ; and they have no 
private, separate fates or destinies. 

Both science and philosophy to-day, not to 
mention religion, whose message of unity has 
always been lost to all save the few, are pre- 
pared to destroy this egotistical illusion, and 
to prove that men in their true Selves are noth- 
ing more or less than dynamic differentiations 
of Being in a unitary cosmic organism, under 
phenomenally individualized and personalized 
forms. And, as such, all our individual lives 
are One Life, all our interests of every kind 
are absolutely mutual, and the purpose of all 
our existences is forever the same, to serve, 
each in his own way, the highest good of the 
living body of humanity. 

159 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

The personal problem, then, for every one 
is how to look beneath the externals and rec- 
ognize clearly the true Self in our fellows 
rather than the surface selves with which we 
are constantly coming into conflict; and also, 
how to realize habitually that in all our rela- 
tions with others, we are actually dealing with 
"others" who, in their essential beings, are one 
with ourselves. We must remember that to 
make any fact a fact of consciousness, we must 
accustom ourselves to the persistent thinking 
of the fact. When tempted, as we constantly 
are, to see in others only the things that sepa- 
rate us, we must turn resolutely away from all 
these surface expressions, realizing that they 
do not express the real man or woman ; and we 
must hold that real Self in them constantly be- 
fore us. 

But some one may say: "If I should hold 
that attitude toward other people, I leave them 
free to take all manner of advantage of me, 
since they are still living their lives from the 
surface, and not from their true centers." 
This is only another phase of the old fear 
thought that is constantly keeping people from 

160 



MAN'S UNITY WITH HIS FELLOWS 

living out their highest and best. As a matter 
of fact, if we would only dare frankly to treat 
men and women, not as they appear to us or 
even to themselves, but as they really are in 
their deeper Selfhood, it would do more to help 
them discover their true Selves than all the 
preaching or writing in the world ; for it would 
be our deepest life calling their deepest life 
into being, and in time, their deepest Selves 
could not fail to respond to the call. 

It must be self-evident, however, that no one 
can ever discover the deeper Self in another 
until he has first of all found it within himself. 
The sense of human unity comes not from with- 
out but ever and only from within. It is a 
consciousness, not a theory, even though the 
theory may be based on scientific facts or 
philosophical reasoning. It is only as one 
comes actually to experience the true Self 
within that he comes to see the same essential 
Self in all others. It is only as he himself has 
ceased to live the divided and distracted life at 
the surface, that he can see beneath the surface 
life of those about him, and discern in them 
what he has already found in himself. 

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SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

Jesus could call all men brothers, and treat 
them as such, simply because he had become 
supremely Self-conscious. St. Francis of As- 
sisi could live the brotherly life with all, even 
with birds and animals, only because he had 
found within himself the true life that is always 
and everywhere one life. Walt Whitman 
could say, "I am one with the highest and 
I am one with the lowest,'' only because he had 
entered into the same great experience within 
himself. All going forth to my brother, in any 
real sense, is a going in to my Self. True 
Self-knowledge alone leads to true knowledge 
of others. 

This is the great achievement we seek to- 
day, and it is clear that it must be an achieve- 
ment of the spirit in man. Slowly, and yet 
surely, it is dawning upon minds everywhere 
that the unity we seek, and that we must as- 
suredly find unless life is to descend to lower 
levels, is a feeling more than a belief; it is a 
consciousness more than it is a theory; it 
must be born in the inner lives of men first, if 
it is to have any outward existence worthy the 
name. If the unity we are striving to attain 

162 



MAN'S UNITY WITH HIS FELLOWS 

in human life is to be worth all the prodigious 
sacrifices men have made, then it must possess 
such a profound moral and spiritual content as 
shall give birth to a new spirit in man, revital- 
izing, all-compelling and universal. 



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CHAPTER VIII 

man's unity with god 

"A man who doubts his own Godhood is an infidel, for in us 
God lives and moves and has His being, just as 'in Him we live 
and move and have our being.' " 

"Here in the Light, I am I, and Thou art Thou; but out 
there in the surrounding dark, you and I and God are One." — 
Professor Carpenter. 

IT may seem strange that we have delayed 
the consideration of man's relations to God 
to this point in our discussion, but there is a 
reason for it that we hope to make clear. The 
old and time-honored method is to begin with 
God first. After attempting to prove His ex- 
istence by the cosmological, the ontological, the 
moral and all the other conventional lines of 
argument, the older theologians assumed cer- 
tain things to be true of His nature, and then 
they inferred from these assumptions the char- 
acter of the Godhead. Having thus deter- 
mined, through abstract reasoning and logical 

164 



MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

processes, the kind of God that exists, they 
then proceeded to describe how this God at 
length drew near to man and made Himself 
known by means of special revelations and 
through various mediating channels. 

The final act in the process was one of faith 
on man's part, by which he threw open the door 
of his heart and admitted the God who had thus 
approached him from the outside. This con- 
ception in its general outlines has had all the 
advantage of being a logical system of closely 
reasoned thought about God and His relations 
to man ; and, while it was based on assumptions 
and its logic was not always flawless, still, it 
is no wonder that for so many centuries it has 
largely dominated the mind of man in his 
thought about God. 

But, as man has been forced to learn all 
along the way, so he is beginning to realize 
again to-day that 

"Our little systems have their day, 
They have their day and cease to be; 
They are but broken lights of Thee, 
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they." 

And men of late have been turning away from 

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SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

these familiar logical processes, these hard and 
fast systems of thought about God, with their 
rigid statements as to who God was, and what 
He thought, and how He acted, and have been 
reaching out in earnestness of spirit for a God 
who was close and near and immediate, a real 
God who should more truly satisfy the deepest 
cravings of their beings. 

The unmistakable fact is that in his own 
life, in his experience and in his thought, man 
has been outgrowing the God of these older 
theological systems, and has come to feel their 
utter inadequacy for to-day. Just as Emer- 
son asked the question in his Divinity School 
Address in 1838: "Why should we not have 
a first-hand and immediate experience of 
God?" so men everywhere to-day are crying 
out for an original, first-hand experience of 
God. Earnest souls are asking why, if God 
indeed be the living God, it should be neces- 
sary for men of to-day to derive all their knowl- 
edge of Him from ancient prophets who lived 
and died thousands of years ago? Do we not 
stand as close to the original sources of knowl- 
edge of God as did the ancients, — the world of 

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MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

consciousness within and the world of nature 
without? Why cannot we have our own ex- 
perience with God, instead of depending so 
wholly on second-hand experiences of others? 
Great as is the knowledge of God that has 
come to the world through the consciousness of 
Jesus and the other true seers of the race, we 
realize that Jesus taught that men might at- 
tain to knowledge of God, not alone through 
him, but each one for himself, through his own 
inner consciousness. Jesus did not come to 
take the place of God, but rather to show men 
how they might find God for themselves, even 
as he had found Him, and then live their lives 
daily in Him and with Him. 

He little understands the religious unrest of 
these times who does not see that, deeper than 
all else, is this well-nigh universal thirst for a 
real God, that is, a God who is real, who lives, 
moves and has His actual being in one's own 
personal experience. Towards the close of his 
life, Tennyson once said to a friend: "My 
chief desire is to have a new vision of God." 
In these words, the great poet has voiced 
the deepest desire of all seriously minded men 

167 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

and women. If we are ever to regain "the lost 
sense of God," which Tolstoi declared to be the 
fundamental need of our age, it will only be as 
in some way we do succeed in catching a fresh 
vision of God. The hopeful sign for religion 
is that such a fresh vision is actually dawning 
on the world, bringing to countless souls a liv- 
ing, first-hand experience with God. 

The modern approach to God, however, is 
not from without but from within. We do not 
begin first with God, but with man. Chrono- 
logically, God undoubtedly comes first, but it 
is not the chronological God whom we seek; it 
is the living God of the present who alone can 
satisfy man's hunger and thirst. So that we 
do not seek God through logical processes, and 
then argue from our conclusions as to God's 
relations to man. But we discover Him, if at 
all, in our own inner consciousness; and not 
until then are we truly able to understand any- 
thing of His relations to His world and to hu- 
manity as a whole. 

We do not begin by defining Him; in fact 
we care less and less about any definitions of 
God, for we realize that every definition al- 

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MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

ways leaves out more than it puts in. But we 
are intensely concerned with knowing, feeling, 
experiencing for ourselves the immediate con- 
sciousness of God. We are learning at last 
that the pathway to God lies ever and always 
through man's own inner being. This is by 
no means to disparage the paths that lead 
through nature to God, especially in view of 
the tremendous light that science is throwing 
on these paths ; but it is to confess that no one 
sees clearly the paths that lead through nature, 
until he has first learned to walk in the path- 
way that lies through human nature. 

Without recalling the various definitions 
that have been given of religion, there is no 
question but that the essence of religion, what- 
ever outward forms it may take, is the con- 
sciousness of God ; and the ultimate goal of 
religion has always been to secure union with 
God. This is by no means all that constitutes 
religion, but it most certainly is its true heart 
and soul. Organized religion has always 
tended to lay the chief stress on other things, 
like the sacraments, the creed, baptism, the 
manner of worship, etc., but the truly great re- 

169 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

ligious leaders in every age have recognized 
clearly that the only salvation worthy the name 
was the life that resulted from union with the 
Divine. To them, all dogmas and every ec- 
clesiastical rite or ceremony were only the 
means to that great end. They might help to- 
ward such union, in which case they were to be 
employed gratefully; or again, they might 
stand as actual hindrances, in which case they 
were frankly to be rejected. The end of re- 
ligion to all true Saviours, and the end never 
to be lost sight of, has been the finding of God 
and living one's life in union with Him. 

This was just what religion meant to Jesus. 
The divinity of Jesus does not depend on the 
historicity of the birth-stories, or on any so- 
called miracle, but alone on his unique God- 
consciousness. He felt himself to be one with 
God. To him, God was not a formula to be 
explained, or a dogma to be believed, least of 
all a name to conjure by. He was the won- 
drous life welling up in him as consciousness, 
and constituting in him his true essential Self- 
hood. "The works that I do are not mine, but 
the Father's who sent me." 

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MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

And what was to him an actual experience 
in consciousness, he knew was an experience 
possible to all men and women, when once they 
had awakened to the meaning of their true 
Selfhood. When he said: "I am come that 
ye may have life, and may have it more 
abundantly," he was speaking of the more 
abundant life that issues forth from a man's 
consciousness of his vital union with God. 
His last prayer for his disciples reveals this: 
"That ye all may be one, as I and my Father 
are one. . . . That they may be one, even as 
Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, so 
may they also be in us. ... I in them and 
Thou in me, that they may be perfected into 
One." 

The mystic's "way of life," in every age, 
has been "the way" that led eventually, after 
the "darkness" and the "illumination" had 
been passed through, to the beatific vision, the 
ineffable bliss of union with God. When we 
use the word "mystic" as applied to religion, 
we need to explain just what is meant by the 
term, especially to-day with the new awaken- 
ing of interest in the subject. To many peo- 

171 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

pie the word carries little or no meaning; to 
others it has an ominous and forbidding sound, 
as though the safe and beaten track were be- 
ing forsaken for mere will-o'-the-wisps. 

By mysticism we mean that type of religion 
which puts the emphasis on immediate aware- 
ness of one's relation to God, on direct and 
intimate consciousness of the Divine Presence 
within as well as without. In other words, it 
is religion in its most intense, living and spir- 
itual stage. Just because mysticism, then, 
means religion grounded primarily in experi- 
ence, rather than based on church or creed, it 
has peculiar interest for an age that demands 
as the bisis of truth the testimony of experi- 
ence. 

This type of religion is by no means confined 
to Christianity but belongs in some real degree 
to all faiths; for first-hand experiences of a 
Divine and Higher Presence are as old as hu- 
man personality; in fact, they constitute the 
beginnings of all religions. Dr. Brinton, in 
"Religions of Primitive Peoples," says that 
"all religions depend for their origin and con- 
tinuance directly upon inspiration," that is, 

172 



MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

upon direct and immediate experiences, not on 
books or institutions or creeds. 

All sacred writings, all creeds and rituals, 
all institutions of every religion are the prod- 
uct, not the cause, of these first-hand experi- 
ences in the inner lives of men. The men who 
have made religion a vital power for any peo- 
ple or any age, have always been the men who 
believed they stood face to face with God, and 
heard His voice and felt His presence in their 
souls. Whence came the sacred writings of 
all religious faiths? They were not miracu- 
lously prepared and let down from the skies. 
They are simply the written experiences of 
men in all ages who believed they heard the 
voice of God, that in their own inner conscious- 
ness His truth or His will had been revealed. 

This direct consciousness of God, this inner 
experience of the Great Reality, is, however, 
not confined to a few chosen spirits, or the rare 
"geniuses" in religion. "There are multitudes 
of men and women in out of the way places, in 
backwoods towns and on uneventful farms, 
who are the salt of the earth and the light of 
the world in their respective communities, 

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SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

simply because they have had experiences 
which revealed to them realities which their 
neighbors missed, and powers to live by which 
the mere church-goers failed to find." Many 
such have been looked upon with suspicion by 
their conventional neighbors; they have been 
misunderstood, they have often been called 
"free-thinkers," or even "infidels," because 
they could not conform to the traditional theo- 
logical tests. The mystic has been the martyr 
of every age. But he has ever been the true 
conservator of real religion none-the-less ; and 
without him, religion would have long since 
vanished from the world. For the soul of re- 
ligion is ever and always — mysticism, — the im- 
mediate consciousness of God within the soul 
of man. 

But what we have discovered to be the soul 
of religion proves also to be the deepest soul of 
life. In every individual there is something 
of the mystical from which no one can escape. 
When we stop to reflect, we find that in addi- 
tion to the outer life we live, there is a deep 
inner life, however indifferent we may be to 
its true significance. Even though we may 

174 



MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

not yet have attained to unity within our true 
Self, there are times for all of us when our 
finite selves do open out on the Infinite; our 
particular and limited consciousness does 
realize occasionally that it is but a part of a 
Universal Consciousness. Even the most con- 
firmed rationalist cannot escape his mystical 
moments, however rare they may be, for the 
experience belongs in some measure to every 
life ; only most of us do not recognize it as such 
or appreciate its real meaning. 

History also discloses the fact that the 
mystic has been the true saviour, not only of 
spiritual religion, but of all that is highest and 
best in the life of humanity. He has been the 
leaven in the lump, the flame within the smoke, 
the vital spark in the otherwise dead body. 
He has saved humanity again and again from 
being utterly submerged under scholastic 
formalism, blind selfishness or stupefying in- 
difference that were stifling to man's true 
spirit. 

Far from being the unpractical dreamers 
they are too often conceived to have been, they 
have braved storms, endured conflicts, and gone 

175 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

through fiery afflictions that would have over- 
whelmed the one whose "anchor did not reach 
within the veil." They have led great reforms 
and championed movements of vital signifi- 
cance to the people. They have been prophets 
of truth who have blazed the way to new and 
higher view-points. They have been the 
spiritual leaders who have inspired the dis- 
pirited hosts and led them on to higher levels 
of life. They have ever been the God-sent 
men and women who have saved mankind from 
stagnation and marshaled the race along lines 
of truer progress. And they have been able 
to render these high services, because they felt 
themselves allied inwardly with a Power larger 
than themselves, who was working with them 
and through them. 

There is no question that there are "mystical 
experiences" which are abnormal and patho- 
logical, but there is no more reason to narrow 
the word to cover this type alone, than there 
is for limiting the word "love" to pathological 
love alone. Mystical experience may stretch 
over all the degrees, from the most perfect 
sanity to utter disorganization of the self; it is 

176 



MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

the sane and normal mysticism that alone con- 
cerns us now. It is President King of Ober- 
lin College who says: "The truly mystical 
may be summed up as simply a protest in favor 
of the whole man, — the entire personality. It 
says that men can experience and live and feel 
and do much more than thev can formulate, 
define, explain or even fully express. Living 
is more than thinking." This is only another 
way of saying that all life, in its deepest as- 
pects, proceeds from mystical sources. 

The clear conclusion from all man's age- 
long searching, is that there is no direct path- 
way to God through the intellect solely; the 
existence of God never has been, and never can 
be, proved by purely intellectual processes, as 
one would demonstrate a problem in mathema- 
tics. If we are limited in our search for truth 
to the outer world only, our knowledge, great 
and wonderful and suggestive as it is, must 
forever fall far short of reality. All who have 
sought reality with the scientist in the external 
world merely, or with the hedonist in the world 
of the senses merely, or with the philosopher in 
the world of pure ideas merely, or with the 

177 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

historian in the past merely, have been doomed 
to bitter disappointment. 

All who have ever actually found Reality, 
since the world began, have found it in the 
same way, — by looking within. All who have 
ever come truly to know God, whatever form 
their religion may have taken, have always 
found Him in the same place, — within. The 
inner door alone swings open to Reality; and 
religious certainty has always and ever been 
found only within; not in book or church or 
creed, but in the whisper of the still, small 
voice. 

For as Jesus said: "The kingdom of God 
is within you" Only after all outward search 
is abandoned and one turns at last to the world 
within, will man find what he seeks, and what 
every soul, when it awakens, will desire above 
everything else. For all knowledge and dis- 
covery of God is, in the last analysis, Self- 
discovery and Self-knowledge. The con- 
sciousness of unity with God can only be at- 
tained through true Self -consciousness. The 
pathway to God is the pathway of the inner 

life. 

178 



MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

Why this should be so, becomes self-evident 
when we recall the conclusions to which we 
have already come. We have seen that the 
ultimate in man, the real Self that lies back of 
all the "hundred selves" on the surface of his 
life, is his true being, unchanged and per- 
manent. This true Self dwells in all men, 
though but few as yet have become conscious 
of it. We have also found in nature, the outer 
world, a something, — a larger Self, a World- 
spirit, — 'call it what you will, with which we 
seem to be able to enter into communion, at 
least in our highest moments. We have also 
seen that the consciousness of unity within, 
with nature or with our fellows, comes to us not 
through our surface "selves" but only through 
our deeper Self. 

We experience our oneness with nature, not 
when we contemplate its outer aspects merely, 
but when we penetrate to its inner meaning; 
we realize our unity with our fellows only when 
we pierce beneath their surface selves to the 
deeper beings within. The one aspect of life, 
then, of which we may predicate unity, is this 
true Self in us, in others and in all things. 

179 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

What is this true Self, the consciousness of 
which alone brings us into union with nature, 
with our fellows and with God? It is nothing 
less than the God in us, who also in-dwells all 
things. This duality in unity which we have 
found to be the essence of the Self in us, has 
also been regarded by the profoundest think- 
ers as constituting the essential nature of Re- 
ality or God. The ego in man, or his true 
Self, is then, literally, the microcosm of God in 
its most fundamental aspect. 

Let us put this great truth in another way. 
1. There is but one substance, being, life- 
force; and that substance, being, life-force is 
Reality or God. 2. All phenomena of every 
kind, since all that is has come forth from be- 
ing or substance, are manifestations, differen- 
tiations, expressions of God. 3. Of all these 
manifestations, humanity is the highest at- 
tained in the evolutionary process as yet. 4. 
The most highly developed men and women, 
then, are the fullest and clearest manifesta- 
tions of God of which we know anything, at 
least on this planet. 

Or, as the old statement of Divine imma- 

180 



MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

nency puts it: God sleeping in the stone, 
awakening in the plant, coming to conscious- 
ness in the animal, coming to self -conscious- 
ness in human life, and coming to fullest self- 
consciousness in the great souls, the seers and 
saviours of the race. Once these propositions 
are admitted, it becomes clear that the truest 
way to arrive at the knowledge of God is 
through the study of man; and that if man is 
ever to find his real unity with God, it must 
be through the discovery of the Self which is 
the highest manifestation of God within him. 
The problem of God, then, becomes the prob- 
lem of man; and the quest for God becomes 
man's search for his true Self. 

From the beginning man has been rediscov- 
ering God constantly, and in his latest discov- 
ery he finds that God is that supreme cosmic 
and social organism of which he himself is a 
constituent part and a most significant organ 
and function. He is one of God's minds, and 
through this human mind which is at the same 
time the mind of God, he has discovered his 
true Self, which is one with the true Self in 
every other individual and one with the Greater 

181 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

Self of the universe. "Thus has God, the 
whole, found Himself in man, the part, as man 
becomes conscious of his true being; and thus 
has man, the part, found himself in God and 
of God, the whole. At last God knows Him- 
self as God in man. At last man knows him- 
self as man in God." 

As Elmer T. Gates, the eminent psycholo- 
gist, says: "The individual self is part of the 
Total Self. You trace your pedigree back to 
the beginningless Totality, — the All. You 
have the Universehood in you. Whatever 
God is, that thou art also." 

This true Self, then, is the essential reality 
in man, and is not only from God, as all things 
must be from God, but is a literal part of God 
and therefore, one with Him. That this is the 
clear and unmistakable conclusion to which 
modern philosophy has come, the following 
quotations will illustrate. Professor Carpen- 
ter says: "The long passion of our humanity 
is borne in all its multitudinous variety by 
God." "God's life is simply all life," says 
Professor Royce of Harvard. "It is this 
thought of the suffering God who is just our 

182 



MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

own true Self, who actually and in our flesh 
bears the sins of the world, and whose natural 
body is pierced by the wounds which hateful 
fools inflict upon Him. . . . God is not in His 
ultimate essence another being than yourself. 
. . . You are truly one with God and part of 
His very life. He is the self of your self, the 
soul of your soul, the life of your life." 

Fichte, the great German philosopher, says: 
"An insight into the absolute unity of the hu- 
man existence with the divine, is certainly the 
profoundest knowledge that man can attain. 
When he realizes that the divine life and en- 
ergy actually live in him, then, whatever comes 
to pass around him, nothing will appear 
strange or unaccountable. He knows that he 
is in God's world and that nothing can be, that 
does not directly tend to good. His whole 
outward existence flows forth softly and gently 
from his inner being, and issues out into reality 
without difficulty or hindrance." 

It is clear, then, that our most modern 
science and philosophy is practically at one 
with the deepest spiritual teachings of all re- 
ligions as to the relation between God and 

183 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

man. It is the Universal Being, the Cosmic 
Mind, which alone is permanent, which alone 
is identical, which alone constitutes the im- 
mortal Self ; and the real being, the true Self in 
each individual, is only this Universal Being 
differentiated in us. "It passes and repasses 
like an electric stream of energy; and through 
the perfect, unbroken and indivisible unity of 
its own cosmic body and spirit, it binds and 
holds all its transitory and ephemeral forms 
into a perfect cosmic and organic oneness." 

Our minds are its mind, as our bodies are its 
body. Our memories too are, in reality, its 
memories. In the partial and personal mean- 
ing of the word, the "I" of to-day is a dis- 
tinctly different "I" from that of yesterday; 
but in the integral or cosmic sense, the "I'* of 
to-day is the self-same and continuous "I" as 
that of yesterday. We retain our human in- 
dividuality only through the universal and di- 
vine individuality of God. 

The "Know thyself" of the old Oracle has 
become a catch-phrase to-day, but its real 
significance is lost for most men. Self-knowl- 
edge to the old philosophers implied, not a 

184 



MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

cursory knowledge of our mental states or our 
personal traits, but it meant the perception of 
the true Self, and the recognition of the one- 
ness of this Self in man with the reality of 
God, rather than with the phenomenal world. 

If, standing on the bank of a stream, you 
should imagine yourself to be moving onward 
with the current, now tossed in air, now drawn 
under the waters, your condition would illus- 
trate the usual state of mind for most people. 
For just so we observe the passing stream of 
the phenomenal and identify ourselves with it, 
oblivious of the fact that the true Self, the real 
man, the Knower, is himself unmoved, un- 
changed, the actual Observer of the stream. 

This, then, in brief is the newer conception 
of God that is at the same time the oldest con- 
ception, and that is making God real to count- 
less lives throughout the world, for whom the 
old theology had lost its meaning. It is the 
idea of a Being who is not apart from us, but 
a very part of us, who need not be approached 
with hesitancy through a number of mediators, 
but who can be found immediately deep within 
one's own life, the One in whom we all live and 

185 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

move and have our being, even as He lives and 
moves and has His being in us. And we find 
our unity in Him as we become conscious that 
our true Self is indeed the God-in-us. 

As a recent writer has most beautifully and 
truly expressed it: "God, then, using the 
familiar, traditional, religious name for the 
Universal Self, in reality is our Home, our 
great Companion, our enfolding Lover, the 
deepest Self within the self, the Larger Self 
which embraces all our narrower selves. He 
is the all-flooding Light within which we are 
the rays; He is the creative Fire within which 
we are as sparks and flames. Language is all 
too-feeble to describe the closeness and in- 
timacy with which He enfolds us and enthuses 
us; penetrative as light, pervasive as air; in 
subtler contact with us than is the ether to the 
inflow and throughflow of which the solidest 
material offers no bar or hindrance; more in- 
timate in His embrace of our spirits than that 
wherewith the ocean gathers the drops of water 
within it, or the earth-crust enfolds indistin- 
guishably the mountain roots ; Life of our life, 
Breath of our breath, Soul of our soul; all- 

186 



MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

shadowing, all-indwelling; 'the fulness that 
filleth all things.' " 

Something at which these words but feebly 
hint, is what God is to us in reality. But the 
old, false feeling of separateness has seemed to 
put Him far away from most lives ; it has fash- 
ioned Him as a mighty individual set over in 
opposition to us, to be in some way won over 
to our side, or else forever feared. But this 
superficial, childish and illusory idea of God 
is altogether false. It creates a gulf between 
God and man which never existed; and in the 
train of this false thinking come all the errors, 
false doctrines, competitive theologies which 
have only increased the disunity in man's life, 
instead of forever banishing it. 

The whole problem of finding God and real- 
izing one's unity with Him is exactly similar to 
that of finding one's true Self. It is altogether 
a problem of consciousness, that is, of the 
widening and deepening of one's consciousness 
so as to include in it facts that have not yet 
become an actual part of one's experience. 
And it rests with each individual to decide just 
what facts he shall take into his experience and 

187 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

thus make a part of his conscious being. The 
law that applies is the old simple law of At- 
tention. The things to which I give persistent 
attention are inevitably the things that become 
a part of my consciousness. When a man 
earnestly and sincerely desires to find God, he 
will succeed, and he will find the real God 
within himself first of all. 

The new light that is shining for us to-day 
is helping to dispel the doubts from many 
minds, and is clearly proving that the limita- 
tions resting upon our lives are mostly self- 
imposed; that, in the main, we can make our 
lives whatsoever we will ; that the fundamental 
thing in our personal development is the un- 
folding of consciousness, and that we can take 
into consciousness whatever experiences and 
knowledge we choose by simply centering our 
attention along those lines. 

We shall have found our unity with God, 
when we have discovered the divineness of our 
true Selves and know ourselves to be one with 
the divine Self in all others. 

"If thou wouldst name the Nameless, and descend 
Into the Temple-cave of thine own self, 

188 



MAN'S UNITY WITH GOD 

There, brooding by the central altar, thou 
Mayst haply learn the Nameless hath a voice 
By which thou wilt abide, if thou be wise; 
For knowledge is the swallow on the lake, 
That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there, 
But never yet hath dipt into the Abysm." 



189 



CHAPTER IX 

THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

"Eager ye cling to shadows, dote on dreams; 
A false self in the midst ye plant, and make 
A world around which seems 
Blind to the heights beyond, deaf to the sound 
Of sweet airs breathed from far past Indra's sky; 
Dumb to the summons of the true life kept 
For him who puts the false life by. 
So grow the strifes and lusts which make earth's woe; 
So grieve poor cheated hearts and flow salt tears; 
So wax the passions, envies, angers, hates; 
So years chase blood-stained years 
With wild, red feet." — Edwin Arnold. 

IT may have appeared to some that the fore- 
going presentation of the principle of unity 
as a fact to be realized first in the inner spirit- 
ual consciousness of man may be practical for 
individual relations, but that it is utterly im- 
practical when we seek to apply it to a complex 
whole like human society. Far from this be- 
ing true, it will now be our endeavor to show 
that it is the only principle upon which a truly 

190 



THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

great and progressive society can ever be 
based. 

We may be willing to admit that there is a 
true ego in ourselves and in all other individual 
men and women; we may even be able to con- 
ceive of a cosmic ego that manifests itself 
through all the phenomena of nature, includ- 
ing man. But how is it possible even to im- 
agine a social ego, standing back of all the 
various and diverse types of individuals that 
constitute society; and even if there were such 
an ego, how could society ever become con- 
scious of it, as being its true social Self? 

As we look out upon society to-day, we dis- 
cern everywhere deep cleavages separating 
class from class, and wide gulfs dividing in- 
dividual from individual ; and all of these grow- 
ing out of deep-seated political, economic, 
social, intellectual, moral and religious differ- 
ences. How is any kind of genuine unity 
possible amid such wide-spread and deep- 
seated divisions? If society and the individ- 
uals who compose it are indeed just as they 
appear to be, then our quest for social unity 
would seem to be well-nigh hopeless. But 

191 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

suppose the society we see is itself based upon 
illusion, and that this illusion, so generally ac- 
cepted, is the cause of our social disunity, 
might there not then be ground for hope? Let 
us examine the facts more carefully. 

A clear and impartial review of the toilsome 
and tragic path over which mankind has come 
since the beginning, is most encouraging to the 
idea of human progress, in spite of all the pes- 
simists; for it reveals the fact that man has 
struggled upward most heroically, from the 
blindness of the brute to the imperfect vision 
of to-day. All along the way he has been sup- 
planting his old illusions with the truth. 
Many forms of cruelty and injustice and 
wrong have been banished from the world. In 
various striking respects, man has been slowly 
learning to master himself, — his passions, his 
desires, his appetites. He has grown, on the 
whole, much more humane, and has developed 
the spirit of altruism to an undreamed of de- 
gree. 

But, in spite of every improvement that has 
been made in the conditions of human life, the 
question forces itself upon us: Have we 

192 



THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

reached the end of our tragic illusions ? Have 
we destroyed and banished them all, as yet? 
Have we conquered all wrongs, or have we 
completely mastered ourselves? Are we jus- 
tified in the blind optimism that we are prac- 
tically "out of the woods"? Simply to ask 
such questions is to answer them. If any fur- 
ther proof were needed, the experiences of the 
Great War through which the world has just 
passed would be conclusive. 

As we peer backward into the past of his- 
tory, we can plainly see to-day that many, per- 
haps almost all, of the greatest horrors and 
tragedies of human life have been due entirely 
to human ignorance and blindness. But this 
old and groaning world of ours is still a world 
of tragedies, despite all our boasted progress. 
There are the tragedies of war between nations 
and races; the curse of constant conflicts be- 
tween social and economic classes, between the 
inheriting and privileged rich and the disin- 
herited and unprivileged poor ; the poverty and 
ignorance and degradation of the great masses 
of mankind; the crime, drunkenness, prostitu- 
tion and disease; the selfishness, greed, hatred, 

193 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

anger and contempt which is almost universal; 
the personal ill-will, malice, envy, jealousy, 
quarrels, murder, which we meet with every- 
where. 

Is all this tragedy, horror and misery 
normal and natural, and to be forever perma- 
nent and incurable? Must we forever explain 
and apologize for and even attempt to justify 
such conditions on the old ground that human 
nature is as it is, and you cannot change it? 
Does man act in this way and produce these 
fearful results in his life and conduct, knowing 
clearly and seeing exactly just what the nature 
of his actions really is, conscious all the time 
of just what the nature of this world is, what 
his own true nature is, and what is the true re- 
lationship between himself and his fellows? 

Or, are the tragedies and sins of this age 
and of our present civilization like so many of 
the minor tragedies and wrongs of the past 
which have now been ended, due entirely, or 
at least essentially, to some blind belief, some 
hideous falsehood, some fearful illusion which 
has always possessed and still possesses the 
human mind, thus continuing to curse human 

194 



THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

life, to poison the cup of enjoyment and de- 
stroy the beauty of the world? 

For himself, the author believes most sin- 
cerely that the last is the true explanation. It 
is clear that the mass of men to-day, with few, 
rare exceptions, are as certainly blind and 
superstitious and are dominated by as tremen- 
dous an illusion concerning one thing at least, 
as were ever man's barbarous and less enlight- 
ened ancestors; and this too, the most central 
and vitally important thing to him and his 
fellows, his own selfhood, individuality and 
personality. 

To what source are due all the crimes and 
sins, all the sufferings and miseries that afflict 
the life of mankind? The older theologies 
would have ascribed them all to the malign in- 
fluence of a personal Devil, but we know to- 
day that the root source out of which they all 
spring is human selfishness, and man no longer 
escapes the responsibility of evil in human life 
by any recourse to an hypothetical Devil; he 
must assume the responsibility himself, for all 
forms of evil proceed from something within 
himself. 

195 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

This is why Jesus had comparatively little 
to say about specific sins, but was always talk- 
ing about selfishness, or else its opposite. He 
knew that the spirit of selfishness in man was 
the cause of all evil, whatever might be its par- 
ticular form. And it was the root-source of 
evil that he sought to disclose and utterly de- 
stroy; he knew that if only that could be ex- 
tirpated, all evils would vanish. The only 
devil we recognize to-day is the old devil that 
is present wherever human selfishness is found. 

Back of every crime and sin, of every deep- 
est pang and heart-ache, of every foul and ugly 
blot on the fair face of human life, will be 
found, in the last analysis, some form of in- 
dividual or social selfishness, which always 
separates one from life and joy and the sense 
of unity with his fellows, and shuts him up and 
off in his little, cramped cell of self which is to 
him a kind of "holy of holies," the sacrosanct 
tabernacle of his private ego. No one who 
reflects can doubt that selfishness is the root- 
cause of practically every sin and misery and 
ugliness in human life, and that if only selfish- 
ness could be utterly and completely destroyed 

196 



THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

as Jesus hoped to destroy it, the Kingdom of 
Heaven would indeed come on earth, as he 
declared it would come some day. 

But can human selfishness ever be destroyed, 
— not diminished but destroyed completely, 
root and branch? We must believe that it 
can, or else Jesus and all the other moral and 
spiritual leaders of the race were self-deceived, 
— nothing more than blind, impractical vision- 
aries, made harmlessly insane by a mere beau- 
tiful dream that in the nature of things never 
can be realized. But if it is to be, and can be 
destroyed, what is the method by which this 
great end can be accomplished? This is the 
crucial question. 

Most great teachers, both past and present, 
have sincerely taught that selfishness might be 
overcome by cultivating sympathy and love 
for others, or by developing the altruistic senti- 
ments in oneself and others, toward all man- 
kind. And yet selfishness seems to be as 
strongly entrenched in human hearts as ever, 
and is working as serious havoc to-day in 
human society as formerly. Think of the 
sermons preached every Sunday from the 

197 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

countless pulpits of Christendom, in which un- 
selfishness and sympathy, kindliness and love 
find so large an expression, and have been 
finding such expression for centuries, ever 
since the gentle Nazarene trod the earth; and 
then look about you and remember the inde- 
scribable sufferings of every kind through 
which Christendom has just passed, all of 
which have been occasioned by human selfish- 
ness. What is the trouble? Why has all our 
preaching and teaching of love and the altruis- 
tic sentiments fallen so far short of achieving 
their end? 

It certainly suggests that there is something 
wrong or defective in our method of combat- 
ing selfishness in human life. A moment's 
serious reflection will convince any one that 
selfishness never can be destroyed merely by 
preaching love and sympathy or cultivating 
the altruistic sentiments, good and necessary 
as these things are, simply because this method 
does not touch the roots of selfishness and will 
never tear them out of the soil in which they 
are so firmly planted. 

198 



THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

Love, sympathy, altruism, — these undoubt- 
edly tend to diminish or soften the influences 
of selfishness, but they never eradicate the 
deadly thing itself ; and so the root evil lives on 
in spite of all our beautiful teaching and 
preaching. This cure for selfishness is not 
nearly radical enough; it only touches the sur- 
face of the trouble, for it assumes the reality 
and permanency of that which is the very 
spring and source of all the emotions and senti- 
ments of selfishness, the separate and in- 
dividual self. 

For, in the last analysis, just what do we 
mean bv selfishness? In a word, we mean the 
self making demands for itself as for an in- 
dividual being who is separate and apart from 
all other individual beings. The demands of 
selfishness may be almost infinite in character, 
but, in essence, this is what we always mean by 
the selfish spirit. Now, if there is in reality 
such an individual self, who does stand sepa- 
rate and distinct in essence from all other in- 
dividuals, then it is a basic and ultimate reality 
in itself and, of necessity, all the primary emo- 

199 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

tions, sentiments and loyalties will be, and 
ought to be, selfish, egotistic, private and ex- 
clusive 

There is no question but that the generally 
accepted view is that the innermost love and 
loyalty ought to be given to oneself, — this 
separate individual, this private and exclusive 
self. We constantly affirm this in all our 
teachings as to self -duty, self-love, self-respect 
coming before everything else in life. Hold- 
ing this view, as most people do, the only love 
and sympathy which can be given or ought to 
be given to others, in loyalty to the self, is the 
surplusage, as it were, which overflows and 
radiates from the surcharged realm of the self. 
Love and loyalty, we say, must begin at home, 
in the heart of this private and exclusive self, 
and from thence spread outwards, if there 
should chance to be any excess left. 

As a matter of fact, is not this the essential 
weakness of most of our teaching of love and 
the altruistic sentiments? If we do not actu- 
ally say it in words, do we not mean, neverthe- 
less, and are we not understood to mean, that 
we should so seek to increase our fund of love 

200 



THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

and sympathy as to have enough left over to 
spread around on others, without actually de- 
priving ourselves of the normal supply we are 
accustomed to bestow on the self? This view 
and policy naturally leaves the real source of 
selfishness unmolested. While it may tend to 
diminish one's expression of selfishness, it can 
never eradicate it wholly, so long as the private 
and exclusive self still remains in conscious- 
ness. 

The practical result, as any one can discover 
for himself, is that there are always fixed limi- 
tations in the expression of love and sympathy, 
beyond which even the most unselfish person 
will not go, since this consciousness of the pri- 
vate self always holds one back from giving to 
the uttermost. Besides, one can detect for 
himself the tinge and taint of selfishness even 
in one's most unselfish acts ; and true unselfish- 
ness must be totally unconscious of the pres- 
ence of any self whatever. 

So we are forced to admit that the love, 
sympathy, and altruism which leave the pri- 
vate and exclusive self intact, as a distinct and 
essentially different individual, separate and 

201 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

isolated in its inner shrine and holy of holies, 
will never completely and utterly destroy self- 
ishness as it ought to be destroyed. Selfish- 
ness can never be eradicated in this indirect 
way, by attacking it from the outside or in the 
rear. The best that can be done in this way 
will be to diminish it; but its vital and con- 
tagious source will still remain in the center of 
one's being to taint and poison all of life. 

It is to the supreme credit of Jesus's pro- 
found spiritual insight that he recognized this 
fact so clearly, though he lived centuries before 
the age of the new psychology. In that 
strange and paradoxical statement of his, "If 
any man would save his life (himself) , let him 
lose it; and he that loseth his life (himself), 
shall save it," he is dealing specifically with this 
very subject, — the complete destruction of 
selfishness that he knew to be the source of all 
forms of evil. It is one of his most radical 
and revolutionary sayings and, rightly under- 
stood and honestly accepted, would in and of 
itself completely transform human life. To 
paraphrase his great words: If any man 
would find his true Self that is one with God 

202 



THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

and with all men, he must absolutely lose, that 
is, destroy, eradicate, die to, wipe out of con- 
sciousness, his superficial, unreal and selfish 
self. And he who thus dies to this separate, 
private and selfish self (in his own conscious- 
ness), has indeed found or awakened to (in 
his consciousness) his real and permanent and 
divine Self. 

It is not that love and sympathy are wrong 
and useless when expressed by the private self, 
but rather, that they fall short of being as ef- 
fective as they might, and they never succeed 
in destroying the root evil of selfishness. The 
mistake we make is to think of them as causes, 
whereas, from the view-point of the private 
self, they are only weak and ineffective results. 
They only become the dynamic causal forces 
they are intended to be in human life when they 
proceed directly, spontaneously and uncon- 
sciously from the true Self that knows itself to 
be one with all, and so gives itself freely and 
utterly in love to all, just because it is its own 
divine nature so to do, and it can do no other. 

The question naturally arises: How is it 
possible to destroy this private and exclusive 

203 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

self that has dominated one for years, perhaps, 
and been the constant cause of all forms of 
selfishness in one's life? The first step in the 
process is to disprove completely, that is, to 
one's entire satisfaction, the existence of this 
exclusive and separate self, to prove to oneself 
that it is only one, though the greatest and 
most deadly, of all the illusions that have dark- 
ened men's minds and held humanity back in 
the path of true progress; and thus to wipe 
out utterly one's belief in this separate self. 
This is the great task that is being performed 
to-day by modern science and philosophy, and 
that is corroborated by true religion wherever 
it finds expression. And to these sources one 
must look for the aid he seeks in dispelling 
from his mind the old false illusion. 

When the mind of man has once satisfied 
itself of the falsity of this age-old belief, the 
next step is to turn resolutely away from every 
suggestion of this illusion and concentrate one's 
thought constantly on the true Self at the 
center of one's being that one knows to be one 
with the true Self in all others. It will re- 
quire patience and persistent thinking of the 

204 



THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

Self in this way, but eventually this profound- 
est of all truths, admitted by the mind only at 
first, will enter the domain of consciousness 
and become an actual truth of one's daily ex- 
perience. This is the law of growth and of 
true spiritual development which any one can 
test for himself. It all depends upon how 
earnestly one desires to lose his fictitious self 
in order to find his true Self and thus experi- 
ence his spiritual unity with All. 

But to return now to the questions with 
which this chapter opened: Is there such a 
thing as a social ego, and if so, is it possible 
for society to become conscious of its true ego ? 
The social ego exists as yet only in the ideal 
sense. Society is only gradually becoming 
conscious of its real Self through the gradual 
coming to consciousness in its individual mem- 
bers of their true Selves. When all men shall 
have awakened to the knowledge that the Self 
in each one of them is really One Self, then, 
and not till then, will society have found it- 
self. 

For the disunity, the divisions, the separa- 
tions, the antagonisms that vex society so 

205 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

sorely to-day are due primarily to the fact that 
society, like most of its individual members, is 
living its life as yet on the surface, and not 
from the true center within. Society is what 
its members are, no better and no worse. With 
our modern conception of society as a living 
organism, we need not be surprised at all the 
strife and conflict that afflict the organism of 
society ; for we realize that its individual parts 
and members are strenuously living their sepa- 
rate lives in the spirit of self-interest, utterly 
unconscious that they are integral parts of the 
living social body, and that this body is suf- 
fering constantly because its various members 
fail to work together for the best good of the 
whole body. 

Let a very simple illustration suffice to ex- 
plain the ultimate source of all the evils of dis- 
unity in society. Here are two children play- 
ing with their toys. So long as they regard 
their toys as "our toys," to be enjoyed mutu- 
ally together, as if they were joint possessions, 
there is nothing but peace and harmony in 
their play. It is only when one cries out, "this 
is my doll," or "my train of cars," or "my 

206 



THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

woolly dog," that the disunity enters into their 
play. And this undue emphasis upon the 
"my" and "mine," which begins in childhood, 
proceeds from the false idea that my Self is an 
essentially different Self from the Self in my 
playmate. 

Thus it is in the maturer experiences of man- 
hood and womanhood. The continual empha- 
sis upon the "my" and "mine," — whether it be 
my money, or my clothes, or my position, or 
my privileges, or my business, — is constantly 
introducing into human relationships the dis- 
ruptive principle of disunity. And this is 
equally true of a broken friendship, of a great 
industrial strike or of a war between nations. 
True unity will only come to have its place in 
society when all, — rich and poor, educated and 
ignorant, capital and labor, employer and em- 
ployee, — have learned to substitute the word 
"our" for those divisive words, "my" and 
"mine." This time will come when men shall 
have entered into the spiritual consciousness 
that the Self in all individuals is actually One 
Self, so that what I do for my true Self I am 
doing for all other Selves, and what I do for 

207 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

others I am doing for my Self. Real brother- 
hood, when it comes, will be based on this deep 
consciousness. 

We call this the age of the new social con- 
sciousness, but what do we mean by this fa- 
miliar expression? We mean that we are liv- 
ing in an age that is fast becoming socialized 
from top to bottom, a process that the war 
has only tremendously accelerated. Our psy- 
chology, as we have seen, is becoming social- 
ized. Man does not live his life alone but 
in relationships, complex and far-reaching. 
There are no isolated individuals complete in 
themselves. Personality is recognized as a 
social product and is impossible apart from so- 
cial relationships. 

Education is being transformed in the same 
way, both as to its ideals and its methods. 
And religion must be socialized throughout, or 
it will be left hopelessly behind the age. So, 
our estimate of human character has been so- 
cialized. We realize that both virtue and vice 
are social products; that no man is solely re- 
sponsible for his own sins any more than for 
his own goodness. Bound together in this liv- 

208 



THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

ing organism of society, as we all are inex- 
tricably, we are all in some sense responsible 
for whatever crime is committed, for whatever 
wrong is perpetrated, for whatever injustice 
exists. 

But if we recognize the corporate character 
of sin and wrong, we must equally recognize 
the social character of salvation. The old doc- 
trine held that all were sinners ; some only are 
saved; there is oneness in sin but not in salva- 
tion. This artificial distinction is overcome by 
the modern social way of looking at things. 
There is unity and close association in the one 
case as well as in the other. If one is a social 
product, the other is also. No one can be 
saved alone. If there cannot be an isolated 
personality or character, there cannot be an 
isolated salvation. As a matter of fact, no one 
can be saved from society; he must be saved 
with it, if at all. As Herbert Spencer pro- 
foundly said: "No one can be perfectly moral 
till all are moral; no one can be perfectly free 
till all are free ; no one can be perfectly happy 
till all are happy." 

It is this striking tendency towards a more 

209 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

complete socialization of all phases of modern 
life that reveals the development in our age of 
the true social consciousness. It is from this 
newly awakened consciousness that there is 
rising the insistent demand for social and eco- 
nomic justice for all classes and for each in- 
dividual in society, even the lowest and weak- 
est; and this demand for simple, fundamental 
justice proceeds from nothing else than the 
true ego of society that is gradually finding 
itself through the awakening consciousness of 
its individual members. 

Let it be remembered that the unitv we seek 
in society, like the unity we seek elsewhere, 
does not imply sameness or uniformity. It 
does not mean that we shall all think alike on 
all questions, or all belong to the same political 
party and vote the same ticket, or all hold the 
same ideas for the coming social order that is 
to supplant the old, or all agree on the same 
theology. Such a condition, even if it were 
possible, would be fatal to truth and progress ; 
and such an imaginary society would have 
ceased to be a living body; it could only be a 
dead and useless thing. 

210 



THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

The unity we seek is ever and always a 
spiritual thing, and therefore a thing of life 
and power. It is the deep sure consciousness 
that we are indeed all members one of another ; 
that what hurts one, hurts all, and what helps 
one, helps all ; that we must either all progress 
together, or else all go backwards together; 
that we are all, — rich and poor, high and low, 
wise and ignorant, capital and labor, employer 
and employee, — we are all bound up inextric- 
ably in this social organism that needs us all 
and depends upon us all, and that can never 
realize its highest and best unless each one of 
us, its members, is living at his highest and 
best. 

We find this spiritual unity realized in its 
fulness in the ideal family, the true unit of 
society. There may and do exist many dif- 
ferences between the various members of the 
household; but in spite of every difference, fa- 
ther and mother, brothers and sisters are all 
united in love and loyalty to the largest pros- 
perity and highest good of the family as a 
whole. There are also many ideal communi- 
ties in which the community spirit has fostered 

211 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

and developed to a high degree this same sort 
of unity between its various and different 
members. Why should it not be possible to 
further extend this spirit so as to include all of 
society, which is made up of such families and 
contains many such communities ? We believe 
that it is possible, and more, that it is being 
gradually done to-day as the social conscious- 
ness steadily widens and deepens, and as men 
and women everywhere awaken to the sense of 
their true oneness with all who live and aspire. 

The unity we see in the family or commun- 
ity exists simply because the individuals con- 
cerned have ceased to be governed primarily 
by motives of self-interest; they have sub- 
ordinated themselves as individuals to the good 
of the family or community ; they have learned 
to diminish, at least, their own selfishness, even 
if they have not succeeded in wholly destroy- 
ing it. 

The same thing must come to take place in 
the larger relationships of society if any real 
social unity is ever to exist. No drastic legis- 
lation merely will suffice, no fresh organiza- 
tions will meet the need, no new economic sys- 

212 



THE SPIRIT OF UNITY IN SOCIETY 

tem or changed industrial order, in and of 
themselves, will create the unity desired. We 
recognize that the mere transfer of social con- 
trol from a self-seeking few to a self-seeking 
many, would in itself be of no real benefit to 
the world, and would not banish the tragic dis- 
unity that now vexes society. 

It is a new spirit that is needed, even before 
new forms of organization. And unless this 
new spirit precedes the new forms, and infuses 
and inspires them with a new consciousness of 
the spiritual unity that underlies all our social 
life, despite every difference, we need not ex- 
pect to see conditions changed for the better. 

To all thoughtful minds it must be clear that 
this is no academic question that we have been 
discussing. The need is imperative and im- 
mediate. There is no time to be lost. In 
some way we must achieve a new and deeper 
social unity in this country and in all lands, 
or the future is dark indeed with menace for 
those things that are indeed most worth while 
in the life of mankind. Mighty forces have 
been loosed by the war, both good and evil. It 
is for us to guide these forces into the right 

213 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

channels that shall lead to better things for 
humanity. 

But whence will the needed guidance come, 
if as individuals we are so wrapped up in our 
own concerns, our private plans and personal 
ambitions, so content to continue to be merely 
our private, separate, exclusive selves, so blind 
to our essential unity with all other members 
in society, so utterly oblivious to our vital place 
and function in the living body of society, 
whose condition is just now so extremely criti- 
cal, that we shall miss the greatest of all ex- 
periences possible to man, — that of achieving 
the consciousness of our true oneness with the 
common life about us? 



214* 



CHAPTER X 

UNITY IN RELIGION 

"And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you 
free. . . . 

"He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father," for "I and 
the Father are One." . . . "In that day ye shall know that I 
am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." . . . "Whatso- 
ever ye do to the least of these my little ones, ye do it also 
unto me." . . . "That they may be one, even as Thou, Father, 
art in me and I in Thee, may they also be in us." ... "I in 
them, and Thou in me, that they may be perfected into 
One." . . . — Jesus. 

IT is in our modern study of Religion that 
we have been forced to realize, in a still 
deeper sense, the profoundly essential unity of 
all mankind. Religion is as old as the human 
race, and in its fundamental purpose should 
have proved to be the great unifying principle 
in the life of men. The word itself, coming 
from "religio," means, etymologically, "a bind- 
ing together." But the tragedy of every 
great religion from the beginning lies in this: 

215 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

that what began as a universal or purely 
spiritual movement has, in a short time, de- 
generated into a sect; and while true religion 
is always unifying and all-inclusive, sectarian 
religion is always divisive and exclusive. 

To this, perhaps, inevitable tendency in the 
development of religions, Christianity has been 
no exception. As early as Paul's own times 
we find this tendency at work, as we discover 
him upbraiding the early disciples for claiming 
"I am of Paul," or "I am of Apollos," or "I 
am of Cephas.' ' From that time down to the 
present, this divisive influence has been in evi- 
dence until to-day when we are informed that 
in this country alone there are 180 odd 
Christian sects, all basing their faith on the 
same Bible, professing to believe in the same 
God, accepting as Saviour or Master the same 
Christ and looking forward to the same 
Heaven in the future. 

It is clear to-day as it never has been before 
that it is due to its sectarianism that Christian- 
ity has lost its universal character, and failed 
thus far of becoming the world-power that it 
might become, and that Jesus believed it surely 

216 



UNITY IN RELIGION 

would become. For centuries the Christian 
world has believed and taught that God made 
the Jews the peculiar channel of His revela- 
tion of Himself. The Egyptians, the Phoe- 
nicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, 
the people of India, — all these worked out a 
purely human destiny in a purely human way. 
They had no inspiration from the Divine 
Spirit, and their life expressed no revelation of 
the Divine Nature. 

The history of the Jews, therefore, has been 
believed to be sacred history, while the history 
of all other peoples has been regarded as 
purely secular, or profane history. Think of 
what this view involves. It is as if one should 
attempt to discriminate between the children 
of the same family, and declare that one son 
bore the image of his father, reflected his char- 
acter, and was the recipient of his love, while 
all the other children, regardless of their na- 
tures or characters, were aliens and strangers, 
absolutely shut off from any participation in 
the nature or the love which was a common in- 
heritance. 

Multitudes of Christians still believe in a 

217 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

little current of divine influence flowing 
through a vast sea of corruption, in a chosen 
people saved, arbitrarily, out of a vast host of 
peoples disinherited and rejected by God. 
But to a truly religious nature, such a belief 
is to-day simply incredible. This view has 
made of the universal and spiritual movement 
inaugurated by Jesus, a mere sect among other 
sects. It is worse than a partial view; it is 
the worst kind of atheism, for it sets about the 
Divine Love the narrow limits of the insight, 
intelligence and capacity which restrict human 
affection, and is absolutely inconsistent with 
the conception of a Universal Father. 

Nothing has so broadened our ideas of Re- 
ligion and forced us to see that while "religions 
are many, Religion is always one," as has the 
discovery of the Sacred Books of the East. 
In 1754 a Frenchman came across an old man- 
uscript in the Royal Library of Paris, which 
proved to be a portion of the "Avesta." This 
led to further discoveries, and to-day we have 
183 manuscripts representing the sacred books 
of the Parsees or Zoroastrians. In 1787 the 
"Rig- Veda," part of the oldest Bible in the 

218 



UNITY IN RELIGION 

world, was discovered in India. This, with 
subsequent discoveries, has given to us a total 
of sacred Hindu literature that is over four 
times the size of the Christian Bible. A little 
later the "Pitakas," the sacred literature of the 
Buddhists, were discovered, which are eight 
times the size of our New Testament. 

From these discoveries of the sacred litera- 
tures of the Orient, which have now been trans- 
lated into some fifty volumes, accessible to all 
who care to read them, has come the modern 
"Science of Comparative Religion." This 
science has proved, beyond the shadow of a 
doubt, that all such moral sentiments as jus- 
tice, temperance, truthfulness, patience, love, 
mercy, — far from being the peculiar property 
of any one religion, were found inculcated in 
the Bibles of all religions. It has also found 
that the great spiritual sentiments out of which 
all religions have sprung, — such as awe, rever- 
ence, wonder, aspiration, worship, the capacity 
for faith, hope and love, have found rich ex- 
pression in all the varied systems of faith. 

It has also proved that the Ten Command- 
ments of the Old Testament and the Golden 

219 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

Rule of the New Testament, are more or less, 
and in slightly varying forms, to be found in 
these other sacred scriptures. Some one at a 
great meeting in Boston once declared that 
certain passages which he quoted could not 
be paralleled anywhere outside our Bible. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was present, rose 
and in that serene, dignified manner so char- 
acteristic of him, said: "The gentleman's re- 
mark only proves how narrowly he has read." 

Let us illustrate how the moral and religious 
sentiment of Catholicity has found expression 
in these different Bibles of the race. 

The Hindu Bible: "Altar flowers are of 
many species, but all worship is one. Systems 
of Faith differ, but God is one. The object 
of all religions is alike; all seek the object of 
their love, and all the world is love's dwelling 
place." 

The Buddhist Bible: "The root of religion 
is to reverence one's own faith, and never to 
revile the faith of others. My doctrine makes 
no distinction between high and low, rich and 
poor. It is like the sky; it has room for all 
and, like water, it washes all alike." 

220 



UNITY IN RELIGION 

The Zoroastrian Bible: "Have the relig- 
ions of mankind no common ground? Is there 
not everywhere the same enrapturing beauty? 
Broad indeed is the carpet which God has 
spread, and many are the colors which He has 
given it. Whatever road I take joins the 
highway that leads to Thee." 

The Chinese Bible: "Religions are many 
and different, but reason is one. Humanity 
is the heart of man, and justice is the path of 
man. The broad-minded see the truth in dif- 
ferent religions, the narrow-minded see only 
the differences." 

The Jewish Scriptures: "Wisdom in all 
ages entering into holy souls maketh them 
friends of God and the Prophets. Behold 
how good and pleasant a thing it is for brethren 
to dwell together in unity." 

The Christian Scriptures: "Are we not all 
children of one Father? Hath not one God 
created us? . . . Who hath made of one, all 
nations of men to dwell on the face of the 
earth." 

Or, let us compare the seven different ver- 
sions, from these same seven Bibles, of the 

221 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

Golden Rule, which has been regarded as the 
climax of the ethical ideal of Christian teach- 
ing. 

The Hindu: "The true rule is to guard 
and do by the things of others as they do by 
their own." 

The Buddhist: "One should seek for others 
the happiness one desires for oneself." 

The Zoroastrian: "Do as you would be 
done by." 

The Chinese: "What you do not wish done 
to yourself, do not unto others." 

The Mohammedan : "Let none of you treat 
your brother in a way he himself would dislike 
to be treated." 

The Jewish: "Whatever you do not wish 
your neighbor to do to you, do not unto him." 

The Christian: "All things whatsoever ye 
would that men should do unto you, do ye even 
so unto them." 

As Alfred W. Martin has truly said: "If 
we listen to a Hindu chant, we shall think we 
have lighted upon some missing psalm of the 
Old Testament, so alike are they in spiritual 
content. Hear the Parsee as he offers his 

222 



UNITY IN RELIGION 

prayer for purity, and how slight a change in 
the language should we have to make in order 
that it should suit our spiritual need. We may 
not believe in 'Nirvana,' but we all must walk 
'the noble eight-fold path' of Gautama, the 
Buddha, if complete character is to be ours. 
Open the 'Koran' of the Mohammedans, the 
'Analects' of the Confucians, the 'Kings' of the 
Chinese before Confucius, and in each case we 
shall find ourselves face to face with a religion 
that speaks to us in accents strong, beautiful 
and oftentimes sublime." 

One of the greatest concrete results of the 
translation of these sacred books of the Orient, 
was the "World's Parliament of Religions," 
held in Chicago in 1893. Never since the 
world began was any such general meeting of 
representatives of all the World's Faiths on 
the same platform, even deemed possible. 
The Parliament was conceived and carried out 
by a Presbyterian minister of Chicago, the 
Reverend John Henry Barrows. The clos- 
ing address was by a Swedenborgian, the final 
prayer by a Jewish Rabbi, and the benediction 
by a Roman Catholic Bishop. 

223 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

At the opening session there walked out on 
the platform, Roman Catholic and Protestant, 
Greek and Jew, Confucian and Buddhist, 
Mohammedan and Par see, Baptist missionary 
and Hindu monk, — one hundred and twenty- 
eight couples, — all marching in one grand 
triumphal procession of human brotherhood. 

The effect of the Parliament was singularly 
profound upon all who attended any of the 
meetings. To the non- Christian, it meant a 
better and truer conception of Christianity, 
that had sent them the missionary and the 
Bible, but had also brought them the battle- 
ship, opium and rum. The effect on the 
Christian delegates was still more striking. 
The spiritual conceit that had formerly prayed : 
"O Lord, we thank Thee that we are not as 
these pagan idolators," was removed forever 
from the hearts of all who watched and lis- 
tened. They discerned heights of spirituality 
reached by these "foreigners," of which most 
of them had never dreamed. They heard 
prayers to the "Father in Heaven" of which 
they had formerly thought these "heathen" ut- 
terly incapable. They found among all these 

224 



UNITY IN RELIGION 

various delegates from different and opposing 
religions, the same expression of worship, of 
spiritual development, of ethical teachings and 
religious ideals that exist, under different 
forms, in Christianity; and their hearts cried 
out irresistibly "Are we not indeed all children 
of one Father?" 

Never again, since the disclosures of the 
Science of Comparative Religion, can any in- 
telligent person make the old classification of 
religions, according to which Christianity is put 
by itself in one class as the only one, true, di- 
vine religion, while all the other religions of 
the world are grouped in another class and 
labeled "pagan," or "heathen," or "false" re- 
ligions ; for the elements common to all Faiths 
are clearly seen to be too numerous and too 
fundamental to allow of any such superficial 
and ignorant distinctions. 

The simple conclusion to which we are forced 
to-day is, that there has never been but one 
true religion in the world, and that is the uni- 
versal, spiritual and ethical religion as voiced 
in its simplicity and clearness by Jesus, but as 
also voiced, more or less clearly, by all the 

225 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

great founders and leaders of religion. All 
religions, of whatever name, are but the more 
or less imperfect representations of this one, 
true religion. 

All religion, in whatever age or country, is 
in its essential truth, good and not evil. It 
has always sprung from the same vital source, 
the same religious impulse in man. It has al- 
ways had the same great goal, — the knowledge 
of God, under whatever name He has been 
worshiped. It has always pointed out more 
or less clearly the true pathway of spiritual de- 
velopment. It has been at the root of all 
morality that ever made society possible, and 
has been the uplifting force of whatever prog- 
ress the world or any part of the world has 
ever made. Held in connection with whatever 
amount of error or falsehood you like, it is 
nevertheless the beginning of all truth. Bur- 
dened with whatever superstitions or cruelty 
or lust or hate the religion of a people may be, 
those people are always better off than they 
would be without any religion. 

The one obstacle that prevents so many good 
people from seeing this, is the almost ineradica- 

226 



UNITY IN RELIGION 

ble tendency to ascribe to the religious beliefs 
of those we call heathen, all the abuses we find 
in heathen society. No religion, Christianity 
any more than others, can stand that test. 
Apply it fairly and you must make a clean 
sweep of every religion. On that basis, all the 
wrongs and injustices, the greed and lust, the 
selfishness and cruel warfare of Christian na- 
tions, are the results of Christian beliefs. All 
the divine ideals which Jesus gave the world 
would go by the board. Not many of us would 
be willing to admit such a claim. 

The impartial student of the working of be- 
liefs on the human mind cannot help seeing 
that the gigantic evils of society, which exist in 
Christendom and heathendom alike, are due 
solely to the selfishness in human nature, 
against which religion, whatever may be its 
form, is always, in a degree which is the real 
test of its value, a sincere and solemn protest. 

This is not to claim that all forms of religion 
are equally true or equally good. The purely 
ethical and spiritual religion of Jesus, since it 
is the youngest of all the great World Faiths, 
with the single exception of Mohammedism, 

227 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

appeals to us of this western world, and 
rightly, as being the best and highest form of 
religion that the world has yet known; but 
this is not to deny the essential unity of all re- 
ligions and the insistent demand for a real and 
intelligent sympathy between all Faiths. 

Our foremost missionaries are telling us to- 
day that the attitude of Christianity toward 
non-Christian systems should not be one of 
condemnation, but of insight and of sympa- 
thetic interpretation, that while we have much 
to teach them, they also have much to teach us. 
One cannot listen to these prophetic messages 
on the one hand, or note the financial straits 
into which the great Foreign Missionary So- 
cieties are constantly falling, without realizing 
that everything is calling loudly to-day for a 
radical change of attitude and of methods on 
the part of Christendom toward non-Christian 
peoples. 

The fact is, and the war has made it day- 
light plain, our old denominational distinctions 
have for the most part become absurd an- 
achronisms. They rest on certain hopeless 
arguments which can never be settled decisively 

228 



UNITY IN RELIGION 

one way or another. Our numerous divisions 
are strangling us. Our denominational names 
no longer define. Our labels have become 
libels. The most hopeful sign, amid all the 
theological and ecclesiastical disunity that so 
sorely afflicts, and so constantly saps the real 
power of Christianity to-day, is the new move- 
ment toward Christian unity. But still, our 
attitude toward the non-Christian world is stiff 
and unsympathetic in the extreme. Christian 
unity is not the end, but only a stepping-stone 
to a still broader religious unity that shall em- 
brace all mankind with all their various faiths. 
As we have already pointed out, the race 
flows through us. Humanity is the great 
Drama in which we, as individuals or nations, 
are the incidents. In so far as we are merely 
individuals, as we seek to follow merely indi- 
vidual ends, we are accidental, disconnected, 
without significance, the sport of chance. In 
so far as we realize ourselves to be experiments 
of the species for the sake of the species, in 
just so far do we escape from the accidental 
and chaotic. We all live our lives in a Greater 
Life. Our personal experiences are episodes 

229 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

in an Experience greater than ourselves. 
Even the particular consciousness in us wells 
up from the deeps of the Universal Conscious- 
ness upon whose bosom we rest like wavelets 
on the sea. This does not make for the sup- 
pression of one's individual differences, but it 
does make for their correlation. We must get 
everything possible out of ourselves for the 
very reason that we do not stand separate and 
alone. Our separate Selves are our charges, 
our talents of which we must make the very 
utmost; but our true significance lies in the 
fact that we are all parts of a universal and 
immortal development. 

The same principle holds true of religions. 
Any religion that keeps itself in its external 
forms separate and apart and exclusive, that 
refuses to merge itself in the deeper stream of 
universal religion, is accidental and doomed to 
extinction. Only as the great extant religions 
are willing to die a sectarian death, can they 
hope to survive in spiritual reality. 

The religions in the past have been the 
"great dividers," but religion in its true es- 
sence is, in fact, the only adequate and per- 

230 



UNITY IN RELIGION 

manent uniting power in human life. All 
Christian churches believe it is their duty to 
"preach the Gospel to every creature." But 
what is the real Gospel of Jesus? All too- 
often it has been construed in terms of some 
particular theology or ritual, and always in 
terms of sectarianism, for the purpose of build- 
ing up some particular one of the many 
branches of the Christian Church. 

How foreign all this is to the spirit of Jesus ! 
He taught that God is the All-Father, with 
whom are no distinctions of race or color or 
creed, and that therefore all men, irrespective 
of every accidental difference, are truly broth- 
ers. He taught that God's true dwelling- 
place was in every individual born into the 
world, and that salvation consisted in coming 
into conscious oneness with God and with one's 
fellows everywhere. The result of this con- 
scious unity with the Whole would be, he said, 
love to God and love to man, which was his 
summing up of both the law and the prophets. 

If we believe the author of the Fourth Gos- 
pel, the Christ, or the Divine life that dwelt in 
Jesus in such conscious fulness, is "the light 

231 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

that lighteth every man coming into the 
world." Then, the Christ was in Laotzse, in 
Confucius, in Zoroaster, in Buddha, in Plato, 
in Marcus Aurelius and in all the great souls 
of the race; and, in some degree, in every in- 
dividual who has ever existed or who ever will 
exist. If this be true, then to preach the real 
Gospel of Jesus does not mean to preach our 
theological or ritualistic or ecclesiastical differ- 
ences, but rather, to proclaim man's spiritual 
unity in God, who in-dwells all men, and there- 
fore, man's practical brotherhood here on 
earth; and to help men everywhere to realize 
that unity and live their lives in the spirit of 
true brotherliness. 

The religious unity, however, toward which 
the forward-looking men and women in all the 
churches have to-day set their faces will not be 
a unity of sameness or uniformity. It will not 
find expression in one big church only, or 
through one common form of worship, or in 
one common creed, however simple. So long 
as men differ in temperament as they always 
will, they will prefer and choose different 
forms of worship. So long as they differ in 

232 



UNITY IN RELIGION 

mind, in education, in experience, they will ap- 
proach Truth from different view-points and 
interpret their experiences of truth in different 
terms. It would mean a tragic loss to relig- 
ion, to truth, to life itself, if it should ever be 
possible to force all men to feel and think and 
act alike in matters of religion. Nothing 
could be farther than this from our conception 
of religious unity. 

There is nothing that is so peculiarly one's 
own as his religion, because nothing proceeds 
so directly from his deepest divinest Self. 
But when one's religion is thus real, a first- 
hand experience within one's Self, for that 
very reason it becomes a universal thing, and 
instead of separating one from his fellows in 
some exclusive sect or church, it binds him to 
all others of whatever creed or sect they may 
be. For such an one has found the deep sub- 
stratum of religion, beneath all theological or 
ecclesiastical differences whatsoever, where 
true religious unity alone abides. 

Let us repeat it. We need never expect to 
find religious unity in our theology or in our 
rituals or in our ecclesiasticism, for the simple 

233 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

reason that unity does not belong to these 
realms. These things constitute the externals 
of religion, not its inner life. And unity, 
which is not an intellectual or formal, but a 
spiritual thing, belongs ever and always to that 
which lies deepest within. It is this profound 
fact that all Commissions on Religious Unity 
must take into account, or their sincere efforts 
will be all unavailing. 

We shall find that true unity in religion only 
when we begin to realize that there is a some- 
thing in religion, beyond theology or any form 
of ecclesiasticism, and that is, a living spiritual 
consciousness welling up in man's being. 
When that time comes we will recognize that 
the only authoritative creed is the creed every 
man makes for himself, and that he keeps con- 
stantly open to revision with the coming of 
every fresh ray of new light; the only com- 
pelling form of worship will be that to which 
a man's whole being responds instinctively and 
spontaneously; and the only church to which 
he will give his allegiance will be the church to 
whose spiritual life and message he is drawn 
irresistibly. For all such spiritually awakened 

234 



UNITY IN RELIGION 

men and women there will be the consciousness 
of true spiritual unity with all other religious 
individuals the whole world round, regardless 
of all theological or other differences that may 
seem to divide on the surface of religion; for 
these will have entered into the profound truth 
that while religions are many, Religion is one. 
The world has never before been so ready or 
so eager for this real message of religion as 
to-day. In all lands, as we have seen, the con- 
viction is growing apace that the next step for- 
ward in the progress of humanity must be to- 
ward a higher Internationalism, in which all 
distinctions of separate race and nation must 
be subordinated to a World-life, a universal 
humanity. To achieve this is clearly the high 
task of the twentieth century. President 
Woodrow Wilson, in a recent address, made 
the significant statement that "wars would 
never have an ending until men ceased to hate 
one another, ceased to be jealous of one an- 
other, and achieved that feeling of reality in 
the brotherhood of mankind which is the only 
bond that can make us think justly of one an- 
other, and act righteously before God." 

235 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

What an opportunity, then, is presented to- 
day for Religion to realize at last its true mis- 
sion in the world and, minimizing all differ- 
ences, begin to magnify those things common 
to all religions. If Christianity, catching the 
great vision of its Founder, and rising to his 
plane of a spiritual and universal religion, 
were willing literally to die to all its petty 
sectarianisms, its outgrown theologies, its un- 
democratic ecclesiasticism, and begin to pro- 
claim the Unity of the race, the Universal 
Fatherhood of God, and the real Brotherhood 
of all Humanity, it would indeed become the 
mighty instrument in laying the foundations 
sure and deep for that new World-life, in which 
we should see realized at last the dream of the 
ages, "the parliament of man, the Federation 
of the world." 

Is this only a vain ideal? Let us remember 
that it has ever been the peculiar mission of re- 
ligion to furnish those illuminating and inspir- 
ing ambitions which have been as "songs in the 
night" of humanity's upward march. Relig- 
ion, once purified and made a vital and spirit- 
ual power, can indeed become the mightiest of 

236 



UNITY IN RELIGION 

forces in bringing in the new World-conscious- 
ness that must be attained, because religion 
has always enlisted imagination, faith and dar- 
ing courage in its service. 

But religious unity will never come about by 
any mechanical process. It cannot be manu- 
factured by Commissions or produced by reso- 
lutions. The lofty ideals of religion which 
Jesus announced will only be realized as men 
and women everywhere come to feel that spirit- 
ual freedom means more than any slavish ad- 
herence to any tradition or creed, as men and 
women everywhere come to care more for the 
victory of Truth than they do for the triumph 
of their little sect. Only then will "the world 
hasten the advent of that universal religion 
that shall lift mankind above all differences of 
caste, color, creed and race, into that sublime 
religious fellowship which has been the dream 
of every age and every race." 



237 



CHAPTER XI 



UNITY AND DEMOCRACY 



"Where bides Brotherhood, 
Where, but within? 



So never shall charity avail me, 

And never kind words nor the urging of excellent laws, 
Nor warring for weighty politics, nor voting with the op- 
pressed — 
Only the going to Self, is a going to my brother — 
Only walking deep in to the heart of love is walking 
Out to the darkened cities of men." — James Oppenheim. 

DEMOCRACY is one of the great words 
that has come to enshrine the ideals of 
humanity in this modern age. To many it is 
merely a word to conjure by; to others it is 
like some Frankenstein monster, to be dreaded 
and feared; to thoughtful men it means the 
next step forward in civilization; while to the 
vast majority it is vague and nebulous, though 
wonderfully alluring, as it seems to promise 
a greater degree of liberty and a larger meas- 
ure of happiness for mankind. 

238 



UNITY AND DEMOCRACY 

Never before has this great word dominated 
so largely the world's thinking, never has it 
been heard so frequently on human lips, nor 
appeared so often in print, — in editorial, in 
sermon, in lecture. When, in April 1917, 
President Wilson set forth the reasons for the 
entrance of the United States into the Great 
Conflict, summing it all up in that now classic 
phrase, — "to make the world safe for democ- 
racy," he took the great word once and for all 
out of the realm of academic theory and politi- 
cal opinion and established it forever as the 
practical ideal for human striving the whole 
world round. 

From that hour all the prodigious sacrifice 
of men and money involved in the world-war 
took on a new and higher significance, and in 
countless hearts there was born the conviction 
that at last, in the ideals of Democracy for the 
whole world, we had discovered something 
worthy of the very best we had to give. 

But what is the great thing for which we 
have professed willingness to give our all, if 
need be? What do we mean by Democracy? 
What is the true content of the word that 

239 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

towers above all other words in our speech to- 
day? The answers run the gamut from the 
crass statement of the politician, "Democracy 
is every man's right to do as he d — n pleases," 
to the vague reply of the reformer who tells us 
that Democracy is nothing less than Human 
Brotherhood. The fact is, that for most peo- 
ple the conception of Democracy is vague, in- 
definite and superficial. 

The time has gone by, however, when any 
intelligent person can longer afford to be con- 
tent with high-sounding phrases, while he re- 
mains in practical ignorance of the real mean- 
ing of Democracy and all that it involves for 
the world. Our sacrifices to make the world 
safe for democracy will have been glorious or 
inglorious according to the content we put into 
the great word. The actual progress of hu- 
manity, now that the war is over, depends upon 
the depth and breadth of our insight into the 
true meaning of Democracy now. 

Let us confess it frankly, at the outset, if 
Democracy means nothing more than the pol- 
iticians say it means, then it is a futile thing 
and our sacrifices will have been in vain. It 

240 



UNITY AND DEMOCRACY 

is a vastly larger, broader, deeper and more 
universal conception of Democracy, for which 
the world expectantly waits to-day. 

Before proceeding to consider the inner es- 
sentials of democracy, let us think briefly of 
some of the outward manifestations with which 
it is identified in many minds. Democracy 
may find expression as a theory of govern- 
ment, which declares that the real sovereignty 
is vested in the People (spelled with a capital 
P ) . There is no question but that democracy 
does involve a theory of government, but it is 
vastly more than mere theories of government. 

Or, it mav be conceived of as a definite form 
of political organization, a particular kind of 
government as opposed to an oligarchy, a mon- 
archy, etc., in which the people possess the 
right to elect their own representatives in city, 
state and nation. It is inevitable that any 
democracy must find outward expression in a 
popular form of government, but democracy 
itself is vastly deeper than any mere external 
organization. 

Or, yet again, it may be regarded as a 
method of social expediency, a sop thrown 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

to the restless and discontented "masses," 
whereby they are led to imagine that they 
possess more power in the affairs of govern- 
ment than they actually do possess, and thus 
the more turbulent spirits among them are held 
in check — for a time. This is the base and un- 
worthy use that is made of the great word by 
so many self-seeking politicians to-day. 

While it is true that some form of outward 
organization, together with all the necessary 
external machinery, is obviously implied in the 
word democracy, its actual and vital meaning 
is contained in the great Idea which ever tends 
to externalize itself in some form, and in the 
great Spirit which always creates its own body. 
If democracy consists of nothing more than a 
theory of government or a particular kind of 
political organization, it would be an entirely 
hopeless enterprise, — the climax of unreason, 
the consummate delusion of history. 

The comparative failure, — or shall we say, 
the limited success of Democracy in the world 
thus far, considered as an outward form of 
Government, is due not to the Idea or Spirit 
that lie at its heart, but rather, to the primary 

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UNITY AND DEMOCRACY 

emphasis having been placed upon external 
manifestations instead of upon their inner 
sources. Real democracy is not a thing of 
mechanical forms, it is a thing of life. And 
the life must come first and create its own ap- 
propriate forms, or else we have an imperfect 
and dead machine instead of a living, growing 
reality. 

There is another conception of Democracy, 
well-nigh universal to-day, that is wholly in- 
adequate and misleading. It is contained in 
the statement so often made that Democracy 
means "the rule of the common people." 
Now, if we mean that the "common people" 
are entitled to the rights and privileges of all 
other people, this is certainly true; but if we 
mean, as usually is meant by these words, the 
rule of a particular class of people as opposed 
to some other class, our conception is utterly 
false to the root idea in Democracy. 

For Demos is "the people," — all the people, 
irrespective of any other distinctions that may 
be made. The slogan so often heard to-day, 
"Down with the plutocrats, or the aristocrats, 
and elect the people to office," is not the ex- 

243 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

pression of the democratic idea, though the 
soap-box agitator who uses such language 
would doubtless be surprised if you told him he 
was not only intemperate in speech but un- 
democratic in spirit. He imagines he is voic- 
ing genuine democracy in thus shouting up 
"the people" and shouting down "the pluto- 
crats." But nothing can be more undemo- 
cratic, for real democracy recognizes, believes 
in and works for the good of all of the people, 
— rich and poor, high and low, wise and 
ignorant, — all of the time. Democracy takes 
in the last individual, no matter to what "class" 
in society he may belong; if it leaves out a 
single one, the highest or the lowest, it ceases 
to be a genuine democracy. 

No one will deny that the organizations in 
modern society that are really based upon 
class-consciousness, regardless of which class it 
is, while they may be rendering genuine service 
to the coming democracy in seeking rights and 
privileges for the people they represent and 
who deserve equal rights and privileges with 
all others in society, are actually guilty of di- 
viding Demos, of destroying the basic unity 

2M 



UNITY AND DEMOCRACY 

that should bind all people together, of making 
distinctions in a society to which all classes are 
essential; and in just so far as this idea and 
spirit are expressed, they are hindering, not 
helping, the coming of the real democracy. 

We are now ready for the positive question : 
What then constitutes the inner meaning and 
true essence of democracy? No student of the 
subject, as he traces the idea of democracy 
down through history, can fail to be convinced 
that back of all theories and opinions about 
democracy there lies some kind of a conception 
of equality. Let us take the classic statement 
in our own Declaration of Independence, — 
"All men are created free and equal," and ask 
ourselves, not what did the framers of the 
Declaration mean by these words, but what do 
they mean for us of to-day? 

We know from experience that no man is 
ever born free in the absolute sense. Every 
life comes into this world under a lien of all 
manner of obligations. Not even a Nero or a 
Napoleon or a Kaiser is ever free to do as 
he pleases. Freedom never means license, 
though it is often interpreted as such. No 

245 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

right-minded man ever wishes to be free in this 
sense. He is glad to own the bond of human 
solidarity whereby he suffers and enjoys with 
all other men. What is this freedom, then, 
which we are all said to inherit as a natural 
birthright? It is simply a man's freedom to 
grow and become every inch a man. It does 
not yet fairly exist, for it cannot be realized 
fully in a brutal or selfish society. It is still 
an ideal to be attained outwardly, though there 
are many who have discovered that deeper 
freedom which does not consist in escaping out- 
ward limitations, but rather, in achieving free- 
dom within, through the finding one's true 
Self. 

What do we mean by the "equality of all 
men"? Equality is a common but elusive 
word ; it is not easily defined, and most people 
fight shy of the idea of it. Many think of it 
as a strange outburst of idealistic enthusiasm 
which was flung up from the depths in the 
tragic disturbances of the French Revolution; 
or else, as a somewhat sinister claim made by 
those who have not, upon those who have. 

It is here that our organic conception of so- 

246 



UNITY AND DEMOCRACY 

ciety throws light on the problem. We are all 
equal in the sense that we have each a place 
and a function within the Whole, and each of 
us functioning in his place is necessary to the 
Whole. Our equality, then, is the equality of 
service to, or function within, the living body 
of humanity. And this sense of equality with 
all, is only possible as we come to realize the 
unity that binds us all together as individual 
members of the social organism. Before we 
can become fully conscious, then, of the root- 
idea in democracy, which is equality, we must 
have entered into the actual experience of the 
spiritual unity that binds us all into One. 

With the organic conception of society there 
has come a deep and steadily growing convic- 
tion that every individual should have the 
equal opportunity to develop his inner capaci- 
ties and latent potentialities to the very high- 
est; in other words, he should have the equal 
chance to become, not another, but his own 
best possible Self. This right to the oppor- 
tunity of self-development, however, is not for 
his own sake alone, not that he may live the 
fullest possible life apart in the individualistic 

247 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

sense, but rather, that he may contribute his 
very utmost to the society of which he is an 
integral and necessary member. 

Therefore, it follows that a real democracy 
would make possible for every individual an 
equal opportunity with all other individuals to 
attain his or her highest and best, not alone be- 
cause of any intrinsic "right" in the individual 
apart from society, but also, because a real 
democracy would regard every individual, even 
the least, as an essential part of itself, and 
would recognize that only as each individual 
did attain his highest possible development, 
physically, mentally and morally, could it ex- 
pect to become a complete and harmoniously 
working Whole. 

Almost from the dawn of civilization, some 
ideal of democracy has been gradually form- 
ing, slowly growing and expanding, until to- 
day it has become the all-compelling ideal of 
the age. From Plato's "Republic" down to 
Bellamy's "Looking Backward," there has 
scarcely been an age when some prophetic soul 
has not given the world his dream of an ideal 
state, a democratic society, either in poetry or 

248 



UNITY AND DEMOCRACY 

prose. But all men have never yet perceived 
clearly the ideal, and few even as yet have 
grasped its deeper meaning or come to appre- 
ciate its profound possibilities for human ad- 
vancement. 

Henry George, as Professor Brooks points 
out, did not give his life merely for a system 
of taxation. For thirty years he worked with 
high and rare devotion to convert the world to 
his "single tax," but beyond this lay the thing 
he cared for most, the larger equality which he 
believed the single tax would usher in. This 
has been the great end for which all true re- 
formers have toiled, regardless of the differ- 
ent means to which they have given their 
noblest efforts. 

Those who have written most powerfully in 
favor of equality have been moved to expres- 
sion by the violent and flaunting inequalities 
amidst which they lived. Rousseau and God- 
win, the aristocrat St. Simon and the demo- 
cratic Fourier, down to recent writers like 
Zola and Tolstoi, are impatient and even bitter 
before the fact that those who have too little 
and those who have too much so constantly 

249 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

jostle each other along the highway of a com- 
mon life. It was Godwin who wrote, "The 
human mind is incredibly subtle in inventing 
an apology for that to which its inclination 
leads." 

All down through human history, this mas- 
ter passion has found expression again and 
again in the attempt to establish the ideal com- 
munity, the Utopian state, where men and 
women might live and work together as com- 
mon equals. Sometimes these communities 
have been founded purely on the religious 
basis, sometimes on the social basis; and while 
in one sense they have all failed, in that they 
have never succeeded in transforming society 
and bringing the world to their way of life, in 
a deeper sense no one of them has been a com- 
plete failure, however short-lived, because they 
have all served to keep the ideal of a demo- 
cratic community before the eyes of the world. 
They have been sincere experiments in the 
small of what will one day be realized in the 
large. 

All that has gone before in the age-old 
movement towards democracy, all the strug- 

250 



UNITY AND DEMOCRACY 

gles for individual rights, all the earnest 
search for a truer equality, finds its culmina- 
tion in this modern age, in the vital conception 
of Humanity as a living organism, in which 
all nations, as well as individuals, are essential 
members one of another, where individual 
rights still exist, not for the sake of the in- 
dividual, but in order that the individual may 
better discharge his duties in the service of hu- 
manity, where the spirit of sincere and self- 
sacrificing cooperation for the good of the 
Whole displaces the old spirit of selfish indi- 
vidualism. 

We perceive, then, that real democracy, in 
the nature of things, cannot come from without 
where we have been accustomed to seek it; it 
is a gradual growth from within society. Ed- 
ward Carpenter calls it a "body within a body." 
The figure is that of the perfect insect being 
preformed in the larva. Underneath the 
larval covering, the normal life of the larva is 
proceeding, the form of the perfect insect 
dimly appearing; so that the body of the in- 
sect seems to lie slumbering there, enfolded in 
a thin, half -transparent birth-shrou'd. In due 

251 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

time this protective sac bursts and falls away 
and the insect is liberated, unfolds its wings 
and rises into the life for which it has been pre- 
pared. 

From all that science has revealed there is 
little doubt that the human order issued from 
the sub-human in some such fashion as this. 
The human order rose out of the sub-human 
by a process inconceivably slow and inappre- 
ciably gradual. While the animal kingdom 
went on its usual way the new kingdom was 
forming within it, "a body within a body." 
"Nothing but the patience of an Infinite God 
could have watched with joy the first faint 
beginnings of human things, — the dawn of 
reason, flicker after flicker, with long intervals ; 
the first faint pulses of w r hat was to become 
conscience, so faint, so easily quenched, but 
always returning, strangely reenforced; the 
breaking light of self-consciousness emerging 
out of a group consciousness; the seemingly 
interminable stretches of half-light, the age- 
long twilight of the coming race; not to be 
hurried, for the ascending life must have a fit- 
ting organism through which to express itself, 

252 



UNITY AND DEMOCRACY 

and the requisite physical and psychical 
changes could only be accomplished by infin- 
itesimal steps." 

Something of this same kind is surely tak- 
ing place within the structure of modern so- 
ciety. We need not blind our eyes to the evils 
that still exist. It is like a ghastly panorama, 
passing before the eye of the Spirit, to look 
forth upon society to-day. We cannot deny 
these things nor do we try to explain them 
away ; but still, we dare to affirm that they are 
after all the larval, surface things ; they do not 
reveal the hidden depths where the true de- 
mocracy is forming. 

All the good work that has been done 
through the ages by individuals and groups 
finds here its true significance. All the 
saints, heroes, martyrs, reformers, prophets, 
saviours, lovers, nurses, quiet kindly folk, and 
all ministering spirits ; all the religious organi- 
zations of whatsoever name, the philanthropic 
societies, scientific movements, legislative en- 
actments, hospitals, reformatories, care of in- 
fants, protection of children, old-age pensions, 
etc., etc., all these activities are not fragmen- 

253 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

tary and unrelated spasms of love, dependent 
entirely upon the enthusiasm of the individual 
heart ; they are simply the more obviously pro- 
truding points of the more perfect society that 
is being preformed within the less perfect ; and 
the greater part of that inner body — the true 
democracy — is invisible, deeply lying, subtly 
pervasive, ready to appear at unexpected 
places, and slowly being strengthened and 
fashioned from within. Just as surely as the 
insect must at last ascend out of the shattered 
and discarded cerements of the larva, so the 
inward, spiritual Kingdom — the true human- 
ity — must liberate itself and triumph glori- 
ously over the world-kingdoms, whatsoever 
they may be. 

The final emergence of the true Democracy 
will not be without a struggle — many strug- 
gles — for the crust is thick and we must not 
underrate the obstacles. Organized society is 
full of self-deceit, smooth-faced respectability, 
smug self-complacency, cowardice, infidelity, 
soul-stifling mechanism, rule-of-thumb moral- 
ity, formal religion, mutual distrust, alienation 
from nature, greed, selfishness, envy, slavery, 

254 



UNITY AND DEMOCRACY 

conventionalism, the puppet-dance of gentility, 
condescension, patronizing charity, — all these 
and much more that might be named are ap- 
parently enough to stifle, choke and strangle 
any pulse of spiritual idealistic life; and it is 
not strange that so many hearts of men and 
women are exhausted, prostrated, bruised and 
broken beneath it. But the living spirit of 
democracy is present underneath it all, touch- 
ing all, forgetting none, understanding every- 
thing, despising nobody, accepting all, waiting 
its own time for full deliverance. 

The realization of democracy, then, must be- 
gin in the individual. It consists in the awak- 
ening of the inner consciousness to the sense of 
the oneness of the Self with the Whole. It 
is then, in essence, one with the unity that we 
seek. In fact, it is only another name for that 
spiritual unity which we have found to be the 
essence of all of life, even as it is the funda- 
mental truth in real religion. Like unity, de- 
mocracy is not a theory only, but a feeling; not 
an ideal merely, but an inner consciousness. 
All men are not brothers simply because they 
belong to some church, or have joined some 

255 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

fraternal order, or are accustomed to applaud 
sentiments of brotherhood, whenever ex- 
pressed. We are only brothers when we feel 
brotherliness. Brotherhood, or the equality 
that underlies democracy, is always a thing of 
the inner life ; it must not only be a belief, but 
an actual experience; it must be known and 
felt and loved as the life of our lives. 

There are three prophets in this modern age 
who stand forth preeminently, as having been 
habitually and instinctively aware that democ- 
racy is neither a form of government only, nor 
a mere social expediency, but a realized ex- 
perience of the inner mind and heart of man: 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and 
Maurice Maeterlinck. These are in truth the 
great "poets and prophets of democracy," but 
in what sense? 

To these it has been given as, perhaps, to 
none others, to possess the invincible sense of 
the democracy of all life and its manifold ex- 
periences, to see that all the experiences of all 
men are equally penetrated by the genuine and 
infinite energies of nature, to discern the di- 
vine as everywhere present, to realize the un- 

256 



UNITY AND DEMOCRACY 

fathomable and equable character of our im- 
mediate, ordinary and so-called insignificant 
experiences, to glorify the commonplace, to 
regard as sacred and as possessing absolute 
and intrinsic value, all persons and everything 
that is. 

True democracy, therefore, awakens in the 
individual consciousness, but it cannot remain 
passive. It is something tremendously urgent 
in the heart of the individual and of society. 
It is the ever-ascending life, which is always 
One Life. It is a living power which forms, 
grows, expands within, and ever and anon 
bursts forth and breaks through, bringing dis- 
organization and destruction to traditional ex- 
isting forms, as we see it doing to-day, but 
only that it may create the new and higher 
form. It is the perpetual Will to incarnate 
the new humanity. 

Thus it follows that there is just as much 
real democracy in the world to-day as there 
are men and women possessed by the spirit of 
democracy, no more, no less. If there is to be 
more of democracy in the nation to-morrow, 
it will only come because a larger number of 

257 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

individuals have caught the spirit of democ- 
racy. If there is to come into the life of the 
world a fuller measure of democracy, and that 
is the end for which we strive, it can only come 
as the nations of the world begin to grasp more 
and more the true spirit of democracy. And 
that spirit is ever and always the spirit of 
mutual cooperation of all for the highest good 
of all. It is the spirit of unselfishness displac- 
ing selfishness. It is the emphasis on duties 
rather than the insistence on rights. It is the 
supreme achievement of the true Self in men 
and women, in gaining the victory over all the 
lesser selves. 

The primary emphasis, however, must be 
placed continually on the priority of the in- 
wardness of democracy. All proceeds from 
within. All social watchwords are, first of all, 
spiritual facts; and nothing can ever become 
organized in society which was not first in the 
heart. Structure follows desire, as desire fol- 
lows vision. Revelation precedes reforma- 
tion. The seer comes before the doer. The 
practical man, whom we have made our idol 
in this modern age, would be impotent were it 

258 



UNITY AND DEMOCRACY 

not for the dreamer. The philosopher ration- 
alizes the intuition of the prophet ; the scientist 
formulates the imagination of the poet; the 
reformer institutionalizes the vision of the 
mystic. We forget, therefore, that the man 
who generates and spreads abroad from his 
own vital center, sincere, true, profound broth- 
erly feeling, has a more important place in 
building up the true democracy than the man 
who endows a college or establishes an institu- 
tion. 

Even more important than making the 
world safe for democracy, by the overthrow of 
political autocracies wherever they still exist, 
is the still more primary duty of making de- 
mocracy real for the world by the utter de- 
struction of that deadliest of all autocracies, — 
the autocracy of the self in nations and in men. 
The German militaristic system was simply 
the final, tragic flowering forth of the hideous 
autocracy of selfishness, that lies in the heart 
of all men and nations. 

This, then, is the true democracy: a body 
within the body, the slow ascending Kingdom 
of good-will and unselfish service, the ultimate 

259 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

truth of human society; not waiting our arrival 
at the end of a long history of social experi- 
ment and reform, but itself determining from 
within each revolution, each rearrangement of 
parts, each readjustment of function. From 
outside we appear to be forever seeking, 
through antagonisms and failures, to discover 
the perfect political and social organization. 
From within, which is the truth side, the ideal 
and perfect humanity is seeking to express 
itself amid all the intractableness of human 
minds and wills. 

But the ultimate issue is pre-determined — 
even now it is rinding a broader, fuller expres- 
sion than ever before. And with its coming 
shall emerge faithfulness, self-reliance, pas- 
sionate comradeship, loyal cooperation, true 
freedom. The coming democracy is indeed 
the true coming of the Son of Man in the life 
of humanity. It is one with real religion. 
And the time of its coming is only conditioned 
by the awakening to consciousness, first in the 
individual, then in the nation and the world, 
of the true Self which is democracy, the one 
Son of Man in all men. 

260 



CHAPTER XII 

THE COMING WORLD UNITY 

"When the war-drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are 
furled, 
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World." 

— Tennyson. 

IT is clearly evident to-day that the intel- 
ligent and progressive people of all nations 
have set their faces steadfastly toward some 
sort of a World-Unity that has never yet had 
an existence in the lif e of mankind. The lead- 
ers are keenly aware that the goal cannot be 
reached in a decade or even, perhaps, in a cen- 
tury of time, but the great thing is that so 
many have already caught the vision and are 
beginning to plan and work for its realization. 
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said as 
yet of the Governments of the world, as evi- 
denced by some of the transactions that took 
place at the Peace Conference at Paris; but 
this is only because the existing Governments 

261 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

do not yet truly represent all the people, as 
they surely must in the new democracy that is 
one day coming. 

The greatest revelation of the war, unreal- 
ized before by most men, has been the state of 
practical anarchy under which the nations of 
the world have been attempting to live their 
separate lives, together with the utter absence 
of any true law or order binding the nations to 
one another. Intense nationalisms, narrow 
patriotisms, fierce competitions, bitter rivalries, 
secret diplomacy, constant frictions of every 
kind, — all these conditions that have character- 
ized the relations of nations in what we have 
called a civilized age, have been laid bare by 
the pitiless search-light of war, and men have 
been shocked into the realization that the peace 
and progress and prosperity of the world have 
been constantly subject to the secret plans of 
the Foreign War Offices of the respective na- 
tions, backed by the Junker class, and that, all 
unconsciously, the peoples of the world have 
been living daily on the verge of a volcano. 

Ever since that fatal day in 1914, when the 
seething eruption broke forth, destroying at 

262 



THE COMING WORLD UNITY 

length millions of human lives and billions of 
property and literally tearing the world of hu- 
man relationships asunder, the people of all 
lands have determined that the old irresponsi- 
ble and immoral system of relations between 
nations must give place to a new and higher 
international order, if life on this planet is to 
be worth the living. 

The most significant result of the war is the 
beginnings, at least, of such a new World- 
Order. The League of Nations that came into 
being at Paris was forced upon the representa- 
tives of the Governments there assembled by 
the imperious pressure of public opinion back 
at home. It came in direct response to the 
imperative demand of the people that no mem- 
ber of the Peace Conference dared ignore. 
That the League in its inception was far from 
perfect was, perhaps, to be expected when we 
remember the conservative make-up, with a 
few notable exceptions, of the personnel of the 
Conference. 

As it stood originally, it was not a League 
of Nations, but of Governments; and in its 
first form, it was in no sense a World League, 

263 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

but merely an Alliance of the Great Powers. 
But it is at least a beginning, however disap- 
pointing to all forward-looking minds, of what 
may lead to a veritable World League of the 
peoples of all nations. The Covenant leaves 
the way open for revisions and changes which 
must be made, and which the people themselves 
in all lands can bring about when they choose. 
That they will so choose, there can be not the 
slightest doubt. For it is clear that the hour 
has struck at last in human history when the 
international anarchy that has existed between 
nations in the past must give way to a new 
order that shall include and safeguard the in- 
terests of all mankind. If the present Gov- 
ernments are not ready for this new interna- 
tional order, then the people will change their 
governments, which is always their inalienable 
prerogative. 

The thing that must be constantly kept in 
mind, however, is that any League, or form of 
World organization that may be brought into 
being is, after all, only a new kind of machinery 
whose real effectiveness will depend not on the 
machinery itself, but upon the spirit and pur- 

£64 



THE COMING WORLD UNITY 

pose behind it. Any organization, to be truly 
successful, must have within itself a soul to in- 
form and infuse it with life, or else it is only 
a question of time when it will be cast on the 
junk-pile with all other mechanical failures. 

That such a fate might befall any new 
World Order is easily conceivable, unless the 
new life can be developed and the new soul be 
evolved in the consciousness of nations and 
races. It is our firm conviction that the new 
life and soul, the necessary preliminaries to a 
successful new World Order, are even now in 
the process of evolution; and there are many 
indications that the creative impulse in the 
heart of humanity is indeed at work to-day, 
fashioning the more worthy and adequate body 
for its new soul. 

The first thing necessary for the full emer- 
gence of this new soul in the consciousness of 
humanity is the cultivation and development in 
ourselves of the real international mind; it is 
this alone that can bring into actual existence 
any genuine internationalism. Let us at- 
tempt, then, to analyze in outline what we 
mean by the international mind. 

265 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

In the international anarchy that has 
hitherto prevailed between nations, it is clear 
that the absence of any real unity has been due 
to the fact that the basic attitude of nations 
toward one another has been the same as the 
attitude of individuals toward each other in 
society. Each nation has been living its in- 
dependent life and formulating its own policy 
as if it were a distinct entity, private, separate 
and apart from all other nations. The funda- 
mental conception of the state since the time of 
Macchiavelli, who framed it, has been that of 
an independent, sovereign entity, private, 
separate and distinct from all other states, that 
had the right to do anything it had the power 
to do, that owed allegiance to no higher moral 
law than its own sovereign will, and that, there- 
fore, was essentially unmoral. 

This conception has continued to dominate 
governments and statesmen from the fifteenth 
down to the twentieth century; and while its 
frankest expression in modern times, both in 
theory and practise, has been given to the 
world by Imperial Germany, nevertheless it 
has been the practical and implicit conception 

266 



THE COMING WORLD UNITY 

upon which all nations have based their lives 
and shaped their policies. It is this old, medi- 
eval theory underlying our idea of the state 
and its rights that has utterly broken down 
and gone to pieces in modern times; and the 
great war was simply the tragic climax of its 
final downfall. 

Now, the international mind is the mind that 
has come to see the utter inadequacy and the 
flagrant immorality of all such old conceptions 
of the state, and that has clearly grasped the 
organic conception of humanity. It realizes 
profoundly that states do not stand inde- 
pendently and alone, any more than do indi- 
viduals; that the national self is no more a 
private, distinct and separate entity than is the 
individual self; that this self-seeking, surface 
self in the state is, like the superficial, surface 
self in the individual, only an illusion that has 
blinded men's eyes hitherto to the truth. Just 
as the individual must become conscious of his 
deeper, truer Self within, that is one with the 
deeper Self in all others, if he would experience 
real unity, even so the state must become con- 
scious that it too has a deeper Self that is es- 

267 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

sentially one with the deeper Self in all other 
states. 

Disunity between individuals exists because 
most people as yet are living their lives from 
the surface, selfish self, rather than from the 
deeper center within; and just so, intense na- 
tionalisms, bitter rivalries and fierce competi- 
tions serve to separate nations and races of 
men, plunging them repeatedly into tragic 
strife and costly wars, because nations are still 
living their lives from the surface, selfish, na- 
tional selves, and have not yet learned to live 
from the deeper center where all nations and 
races are seen to be essentially one. 

It is only through the profound realization 
of the truth of the organic conception of hu- 
manity that this monstrous illusion can be per- 
ceived and finally banished from the world. 
When we come to see that all races and nations 
and peoples, the smallest and weakest as well 
as the largest and strongest, are but integral 
members and parts of the living body of hu- 
manity, and as such, they are all equally nec- 
essary to the full and complete and harmonious 
working of that body; that the living body 

268 



THE COMING WORLD UNITY 

falls short of being in a truly healthful condi- 
tion unless all its various members and parts 
are fulfilling their respective functions to the 
highest degree of efficiency, that is, when each 
part and member is itself in a true condition of 
health, then and not until then, can we be said 
to have arrived at the view-point of the inter- 
national mind. 

An ignorant or superstitious people, an op- 
pressed people, an exploited people, a people 
that is being treated unjustly anywhere, simply 
means that a member of the living body of hu- 
manity is in a diseased or abnormal condition ; 
and just as the health of the physical organism 
is always endangered if one of its members, 
even the smallest, becomes diseased, just so 
surely is the health and progress of the body 
of humanity endangered when any of its mem- 
bers, even the weakest, is forced to suffer un- 
justly. Such conditions, allowed to continue 
in the life of any people, are like slow blood- 
poisoning that taints and at last destroys the 
living organism. 

The international mind also realizes that 
there is a higher patriotism than is to be found 

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SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

in the narrow nationalisms of the past. It 
recognizes that above all races and nations 
stands Humanity, just because the Whole is 
greater than any or all of its parts; and that 
to the interests of Humanity as a whole we 
should give our love and loyalty. This does 
not involve, in any sense, that one should love 
his own country any less, but rather, vastly 
more. It means that the old, narrow, selfish 
and exclusive love which a man gives to his 
country as an end in itself, is replaced by a 
broad, unselfish and all-inclusive love for his 
country because of the place it fills, the ideals 
it furnishes and the function it performs in the 
growing, developing life of the Whole of hu- 
manity. The more deeply and intensely a 
man loves his wife, the more deep and genuine 
is his reverence and affection for all woman- 
hood, whom his wife represents. Just so, the 
more intense and intelligent is a man's love 
for his own country, the greater will be his 
respect and affection for all other peoples, of 
whom his country is so vital a part. 

The true and intelligent patriot sees all 
races and nations so inextricably bound to- 

270 



THE COMING WORLD UNITY 

gether in the living body of humanity, he real- 
izes so keenly that all their separate interests 
are, after all, mutual interests, he knows so 
well that what helps one helps all and that 
what hurts one hurts all, that he enters grad- 
ually into the profound sense of the essential 
oneness of the life humanity lives through all 
of its various members. This vast planet be- 
comes to him, as it were, one neighborhood in 
which there are no real dividing walls, no true 
boundary lines. The different races and na- 
tions and peoples become for him simply so 
many branches of one great family; and the 
great end of life becomes for him the achieve- 
ment, first in the consciousness of his own coun- 
try and through that, in the consciousness of 
humanity, of that sense of unity with all that 
he has come to experience in his own inner life. 
The international mind has also learned to 
discern the many likenesses that underlie all 
the surface differences among peoples; it sees 
that these likenesses are far more numerous 
and more fundamental than any differences, 
and so it is inclined to stress these common 
points of contact and minimize the differences. 

271 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

It seeks to familiarize itself with the lives and 
achievements of the great heroes and leaders 
of other races and nations as well as of its own. 
It comes to appreciate all the beauty and truth 
that lies revealed in the great literature of all 
lands, and likewise in its art and music. It 
studies the laws and institutions, the languages 
and customs of other peoples, and also their 
moral and religious systems with a view of 
finding those fundamental elements that are 
common to all peoples. It is open and recep- 
tive to truth, from whatever source it may 
come, and it is not too proud to learn from 
all. 

The international mind does not believe that 
any one race or nation has all the best or all 
the truth of anything; neither does it set up its 
own particular brand of culture as the only, 
or exclusive, culture for the world. But it be- 
lieves that each race and nation, out of its own 
peculiar experience, has something of per- 
manent value to contribute to the sum total of 
truth and to the universal culture of mankind. 
It does not think that the highest ideals for 
life are the exclusive property of any single 

272 



THE COMING WORLD UNITY 

people, but it believes that the highest ideals 
for humanity as a whole will be made up of the 
blending of the highest ideals of all peoples 
who have aspired and struggled toward the 
heights through all the ages. 

Growing out of this international mind, as it 
evolves from the selfish and ignorant and ex- 
clusive national mind we have known, and con- 
stantly fostered by it, will come the new inter- 
national spirit that will, of necessity, breathe 
life and soul through all the machinery of the 
new World Order that the international mind 
will eventually call into being. 

This new spirit will be, first of all, the spirit 
of conscious unity permeating all that is 
thought and said, planned and done between 
nations. It will be a sense of unity that is 
vastly more than any mere intellectual theory 
or that depends on any mere form of organiza- 
tion, a unity that is a feeling, a conviction, an 
experience, an actual realization, welling up 
in the life of the race, and holding a profound 
and abiding place in the consciousness of na- 
tions. This deep sense of the essential one- 
ness of all humanity will dictate all national 

273 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

policies, suggest all changes and inspire all re- 
forms, with a view primarily to the best and 
highest interests of the peoples of all lands. 
It alone will insure the justice and the per- 
manency of the new World Order when at last 
it shall be brought into being. 

This international spirit will also inevitably 
supplant the old spirit of international rivalry 
and competition with the spirit of international 
cooperation and good-will toward all. The 
fierce competition that has forced nations into 
the mad race for political supremacy in their 
lust for power, and that has inflamed them 
with inordinate economic ambitions in their 
greed for gain, will gradually give way to a 
political cooperation for mutual strength and 
safety, and an economic cooperation that shall 
distribute more equally among all peoples both 
the necessities and the luxuries of life. 

This spirit of cooperation, expressed by na- 
tions as well as by individuals, will ever be seek- 
ing the largest possible degree of prosperity 
and happiness for all peoples, not for a few 
powerful nations at the expense of the weaker 
ones. Its watchword will be: The coopera- 

274 



THE COMING WORLD UNITY 

tion of all for the sake of the highest good of 
all. It cannot be manufactured to order, and 
it will not be realized in its fulness at once ; but 
it will steadily grow and develop as men and 
nations become more truly conscious of the es- 
sential oneness of all who share the common 
life of humanity. 

Thus the new international spirit will grad- 
ually displace the old selfish nationalism with 
a higher unselfish nationalism, in which all that 
is good and valuable in the old will be pre- 
served, while all that was bad and the cause of 
the tragic disunity among nations, will fall 
away and be forgotten. When that day 
comes, men will look back on these times of 
strife and wars between nations with the same 
amazement and abhorrence that we of to-day 
look back upon the cruel and barbarous glad- 
iatorial combats of ancient Rome. 

In the new World Order that is surely com- 
ing, that nation will exert the greatest influ- 
ence, not that embraces the widest territory or 
numbers the largest population or possesses 
the greatest wealth, but rather, that exempli- 
fies in both theory and practise the highest 

275 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

ideals of service and helpfulness to the common 
cause of humanity as a whole. That nation 
will be the most respected and loved by all the 
peoples that gives most freely of its largess for 
the sake of enriching the life of the Whole. 
That nation will truly lead the world, not that 
possesses the largest army, or most powerful 
navy, or greatest merchant marine, but that 
has learned to honestly say to all the peoples, 
both great and small, in everything that its 
national life and policy involves : I am among 
you as one who serveth. 

Let it not be thought that this is a World- 
ideal impossible of realization. It may not be 
realized in our life-time, but, in accordance 
with the great law of human evolution, it will 
surely become real some day, and our chil- 
dren's children will experience and enjoy what 
we as yet glimpse only from afar. The vision 
always precedes the reality. It is by faith that 
we eventually reach the promised land. Our 
loftiest dreams, if only we dream them in- 
tensely and habitually enough, will some day 
come true. The world is young yet. Civili- 
zation is only in its infancy. Humanity is but 

276 



THE COMING WORLD UNITY 

just learning to live its life in unity, for which 
all the past of struggle and bloodshed has only 
been preparing it. Besides, there is all eter- 
nity before us; so why should we grow dis- 
couraged? 

The most hopeful sign of the times is that 
the utter inadequacy and pitiable futility of 
the old order (or disorder) of things has at 
length been dragged into the open, so that all 
men can see its shameful nakedness. The 
greatness of any people, as of the individual, 
is always measured by the greatness of its 
ideals and the degree of their realization. 
Listen to the scathing indictment of the na- 
tions as they have been, in Paul Richard's mes- 
sage, "To the Nations." 

"What was the ideal of the world that is 
dying? Judging by what it professed, never 
did more noble principles shine in the sky of 
humanity: Liberty, Justice, Science, Prog- 
ress, Civilization. . . . But judging by what 
it practised, never was the abyss deeper be- 
tween fact and ideal." 

"What have the people who call themselves 
great made of Liberty? A monopoly for 

277 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

themselves. And those who have most use of 
its name are also those who grant it the least 
to others. They wish the liberty of reducing 
the world to slavery." 

"What have they made of Justice? A 
guarantee of their own interests. But the 
rights of others were only measured in their 
eyes by the measure of force." 

"What have they made of Science? A tool 
to serve their greed. History will say of 
them: They acquired much knowledge, but 
they put it to evil purposes." 

"What have they made of Progress? A 
soulless thing, an egotistical and material 
means of domination." 

"What have they made of Civilization? A 
privilege calculated on the number of their fire- 
arms. A hypocritical pretense covering their 
worst undertakings. A mask of fraud." 

"What have they made of Humanity? A 
field for profits, a business market. They 
have treated the nations as possessions to be 
bought and sold, as cattle to be reared for 
food." 

"And that is why the light of all these great 

278 



THE COMING WORLD UNITY 

words is changed into the murky blood-red 
flame of this immense conflagration." 

At last it is beginning to be seen that na- 
tions live on earth in a vast complex of rela- 
tionships, even as do individuals ; each of them 
forms in humanity a real individuality, a col- 
lective being, living and acting. The same 
laws hold for nations as for individuals. Self- 
ish individualism, whatever form it takes, is 
as suicidal for a nation as for an individual. 
There is only one moral law for men and for 
peoples. Each nation must impose upon itself 
the same rules it imposes upon the individual. 
Whatever is a crime for the individual, is also 
a crime for his country. These truths are but 
just beginning to dawn on the world's mind. 

If selfishness, cupidity, robbery, violence 
and murder are looked upon as vile and de- 
grading acts for isolated men, how could the 
collective man, that is the nation, commit such 
acts without dishonor? In what does the 
honor of a nation differ from the honor of an 
individual? And of what use is it for a na- 
tion to assert this "honor'' and defend it with 
her arms, if she herself continually violates it 

279 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

in face of all, by her practises of plunder and 
acts of disloyalty? 

If we have come to see that the true great- 
ness of the individual consists not in his talents, 
his riches or his fame, but solely in the degree 
to which he dedicates all he is and all he has to 
the service of the common good, must the time 
not surely come when we shall also realize that 
the true greatness of a nation consists only in 
the degree to which it dedicates its powers to 
the service of humanity? 

"Until now, the highest duty was that of a 
man to his mother country. But we are begin- 
ning in all lands to see that there is a mother- 
country greater and nobler and more im- 
mortal, more misknown too, possessing fifteen 
hundred million inhabitants, yet counting but 
few citizens ; a mother-country with, as yet, but 
few lovers. Henceforth, it is toward her that 
men everywhere will feel their highest duty. 
For she is the supreme mother-country, — Hu- 
manity. The higher patriotism demands, not 
that we shall love one country less, but human- 
ity more; a love for country, not for its own 
sake alone, but because of what it may con- 

280 



THE COMING WORLD UNITY 

tribute to the advancement of humanity as a 
whole." 

"Nations, living members of a body which is 
ignorant of itself, members bleeding through 
one another, the hour is come to put an end 
to your mutual martyrdom, in becoming con- 
scious that yours is but one and the same flesh. 
Awake humanity." 

In his powerful and prophetic story, "In the 
Days of the Comet," Mr. Wells tells of a great 
change that comes over the world, following an 
atmospheric phenomenon in which a "green 
vapor" is generated in the clouds and falls 
upon the earth with instantaneous effect. As 
this peculiar vapor descends it has the effect 
of putting every one to sleep; this sleep con- 
tinues for three days; and when the people 
finally awake, their interior nature has under- 
gone a complete change. 

Where before they saw dimly, they now 
see clearly; all petty differences and quarrels 
are perceived at last in their true perspective. 
Instead of place and power and influence and 
wealth being the all-important goals of ambi- 
tion, as before the change, every one now 

281 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

strives to be of service to the world. Love 
and kindness become greater factors than com- 
mercial expediency or business success. Hu- 
man brotherhood is realized at last. The per- 
fected society has come into its own in the 
world. 

In many respects, Wells's account of the 
great change and its effect upon people cor- 
responds with the effect of the dawning of the 
spiritual consciousness upon mankind, as we 
have sought to describe it in the foregoing 
chapters. Both religion and science point 
forward to a time when this earth will know 
freedom from strife and misery, and all the 
forms of suffering which its tragic disunity is 
constantly occasioning. Even the elements 
which have hitherto been regarded as beyond 
the boundaries of man's will, we see now, not 
may be, but most certainly will be completely 
controlled in time. All the factors and forces 
that make for social control are now seen to be 
in the hands of man himself. Every change, 
every improvement, every advance in the life 
of humanity awaits only the coming of the 
larger man, that is, the man of the broader, 

282 



THE COMING WORLD UNITY 

deeper consciousness, who has found his true 
Self in union with the Whole. 

Since the race consciousness must gradually 
unfold through the slow unfolding conscious- 
ness in its individual members, how great and 
solemn a moment it is for the men and women 
who people the earth to-day! If the new 
World Order that is to replace the one that has 
been swept away in blood and sacrifice, is in- 
deed to grow out of the new race consciousness 
of the true and essential unity of all mankind, 
and thus make possible a new humanity, it will 
only be as men and women here and every- 
where enter into the actual experience of that 
unity for themselves first of all. Thus the re- 
sponsibility of hastening or delaying the com- 
ing of the new World Unity rests upon each 
one of us. In the stirring words of Edwin 
Markham : 

"We men of earth have here the stuff 
Of Paradise, — we have enough. 
We need no other thing to build 
The stairs into the unfulfilled, — 
No other Ivory for the doors, — 
No other marble for the floors, — 
No other cedar for the beam 
And dome of man's immortal dream. 

283 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

Here on the paths of every day, — 
Here on the common human way, — 
Is all the busy gods would take 
To build a Heaven, to mold and make 
New Edens. Ours the stuff sublime 
To build Eternity in Time." 



284 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE PATHWAY OF REALIZATION 

"Swiftly arose and spread around me, the peace and joy and 

knowledge that pass all the art and argument of earth; 
And I know that the hand of God is the elder hand of my 

own, 
And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of 

my own, 
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers and the 

women my sisters and lovers, 
And that a kelson of creation is Love." — Walt Whitman. 

THE practical problem for every one who 
has awakened to the meaning of the ideal, 
and who aspires to the realization of the prin- 
ciple of unity in his own inner consciousness, 
is the way of attainment. What is the method 
by which, as individuals, as nations or as hu- 
manity, we may translate the great ideal and 
principle into actual daily experience? In the 
foregoing chapters we have made a number of 
general suggestions as to methods to be em- 
ployed, but before closing let us consider more 

285 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

specifically the supreme method for the attain- 
ment of the true consciousness of unity with 
All-that-is. In a word, the pathway to reali- 
zation is preeminently the pathway of love. 

But what do we mean by love, in this con- 
nection? It is a word we use with many dif- 
ferent shades of meaning; it is also a word we 
often use without very much of any meaning. 
A mother "loves" her child; a lover "loves" his 
sweetheart; one man "loves" horses and dogs; 
another "loves" nature or art or music. But 
what does love mean when applied to human 
relationships outside of the family, or beyond 
the circle of "loved ones"? How can one love 
people that he does not know or, more par- 
ticularly, people that he does not like? 

What did the Great Teacher mean when he 
made Love the supreme law for human as well 
as divine relationships? Jesus repeatedly 
said: "Love is the fulfilling of the law." 
But of what law? The law of evolution and 
involution, of generation and regeneration. 
When the time comes that Love reigns on the 
planet earth as it does in the kingdoms above 
the earth, then the Kingdom that he foretold 

286 



THE PATHWAY OF REALIZATION 

will be at hand. And the "law" will be ful- 
filled when Love comes completely and fully 
into its own in the life of humanity. 

There are two words in the Greek New 
Testament that are rendered in English by the 
one word, "love." And yet these two words 
are radically different. Phileo means to love, 
to feel affection for, to hold dear. It occurs 
frequently in classical Greek. The other 
word, agapao, is rarely if ever used by classical 
writers. It seems almost like a new word, 
coined to express Jesus's conception of God's 
love for all men, and man's love for all his fel- 
lows. Agapao is always used in the New 
Testament when love is enjoined as a duty. 
As one writer says: "As a command, it en- 
joins a volitional, not an affectional, attitude 
of the mind and heart toward others. The 
word does not necessarily exclude affection and 
is often used to express it, but when it incul- 
cates love as a duty, what it requires of us is 
benevolence, kindliness, good-will." 

We prefer this word, good-will, then, to any 
other, as best expressing the meaning of love 
in our relations to people in general. For the 

287 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

will is the foundation of our being. It is the 
will, governed and guided by the Self, that 
makes us human and divine. It is the dynamic 
power exerted by the Self. When we are en- 
joined to love all men, it is not intended that 
we should have an emotional love, a feeling of 
affection for all men, least of all, the kind of 
affection we feel for our "loved ones," but 
rather, that our mental and volitional attitude 
toward all men should be habitually one of 
good-will. 

To thus have good-will for all means to be 
kindly disposed toward all, to refuse to cherish 
hatred or bitterness or scorn, or to harbor feel- 
ings of envy or jealousy or revenge for any liv- 
ing being. It means taking interest in others 
and in their welfare, as opposed to the general 
spirit of indifference that rules most of our 
lives. It means to trust others and believe in 
them, to look always for the good in others 
rather than the bad, to see their elements of 
strength more than their weaknesses. It 
means confidence in their ability to become in 
time their highest and truest Selves, and the 
willing desire to help them in any possible way 

288 



THE PATHWAY OF REALIZATION 

to attain their highest and best, — and all this, 
regardless of any return they may make to us. 

While it is true that we cannot compel love 
in the emotional or affectional sense, it is pos- 
sible for every one of us to command the voli- 
tional love, which always finds expression in 
the attitude of good- will and friendliness. 
The one who says that he cannot feel this kind 
of love for all men and women is simply de- 
ceiving himself. What he really means is that 
he does not want to take the attitude of good- 
will toward all, or else that he has not yet dis- 
covered his true Self that knows itself to be one 
with all. This last explains the absence of 
good-will in the world to-day. For this true 
Self that commands the will, holds the attitude 
of friendliness and kindliness toward all, nat- 
urally and spontaneously, simply because it is 
its nature so to do. 

What we need to realize is that it was in no 
arbitrary sense that Jesus and the other great 
spiritual leaders of the race have made love the 
one great goal of man's unfolding moral and 
spiritual nature; it is, rather, because love is 
woven into the very warp and woof of the uni- 

289 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

verse. If love is both the supreme essence of 
that ideal unity we seek and also the true 
method of its attainment, it is thus supreme 
not because the seers have said so; they said 
so simply because it is supreme, in the very 
nature of things. Love even in religion has 
usually been conceived as a beautiful poetic 
sentiment, or as one of the "fruits of the 
spirit" ; but the sphere of love is far wider. 

Love is a universal principle, holding within 
its bounds all the cooperating energies of na- 
ture. It is the primal force which, existing be- 
tween two or more individuals, draws them into 
harmonious relations and establishes the foun- 
dations of happiness. All entities, of whatever 
character, which are subject to the law of mu- 
tual attraction, are the visible media of the 
foreshadowings of Love. "As much love ex- 
ists proportionately between two atoms as be- 
tween two human beings, between the elements 
that compose the chemical substance as be- 
tween hearts that beat in unison." When sev- 
eral atoms instinctively combine as constituent 
elements of any substance, science calls the 
uniting force, chemical affinity. Yet such af- 



THE PATHWAY OF REALIZATION 

finity is but mutual attraction, the common 
force that holds all entities in harmony ; nor can 
we think of such harmonious relations but as 
a phase of the principle of love, the primary 
unitary force ever binding two or more into 
one. 

Love is a cosmic principle pervading the en- 
tire universe, and making possible the won- 
drous unity in diversity that we perceive 
everywhere. Mutual affinity inhering in the 
particles of primal star-dust or nebulae of the 
first fire-mist, as we believe, drew them into 
the original rings or nodules of varying temper- 
ature and density, and finally into the revolv- 
ing spheres and grouping constellations that 
make up the vast and infinite universe. Thus 
we may speak of the love of the original atoms 
without violating scientific verity. "The 
Cosmos is primarily a drama of primitive 
atomic loves, unconsciously evincing the su- 
preme force that sustains the world." 

The Force to which Science leads us back as 
the ultimate power and source from which all- 
that-is has proceeded, is nothing less than the 
force of love. As such it reveals its cosmic 

291 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

nature; it passes beyond the limited plane of 
human relations and takes its place in the pro- 
cession of the stars. All the forces of nature 
are but the transmutations of a single energy, 
and that energy is the infinite and eternal self- 
giving of Original Being. So love is but the 
transmutation in human and vital experience, 
of gravitation and attraction in the material 
world. 

As we ascend from the vegetal to the animal 
world, we discover this ever present principle 
increasing in power and manifestly directed 
by individual intelligence. Side by side with 
the struggle for existence is the struggle for 
the existence of others, as expressed through 
the love of offspring. The mother-love in 
animals is the secret force that generates and 
ever preserves, protects and defends its off- 
spring. In nature's marvelous transmutation 
of forces, the very selfishness that compels the 
mother animal to fight for its own young, be- 
comes unconsciously altruistic, in that it re- 
sults in the preservation of the entire species. 

From a primitive force in the animal world, 
the love of offspring has become in human kind 

292 



THE PATHWAY OF REALIZATION 

the strongest manifestation of the cosmic prin- 
ciple of love yet developed. It is at once the 
conserving force of civilization and the great 
dynamic of evolution. 

The experience of the race has finally proved 
that the family is the essential and indispensa- 
ble center and unit of society. But whence 
comes the family? The answer gives us an- 
other fascinating chapter in the unfolding 
love-story of the universe, and illustrates most 
beautifully the development of the principle of 
unity in human life. Although the mother- 
love primarily protected the young and thus 
preserved the species, it was not until mother- 
love, through the lengthened period of in- 
fancy, awoke the father-love, and the two 
united, developed into household love that it 
was possible for the family to come into being. 
The love of lover must become the love of hus- 
band, the love of husband and wife must be- 
come the love of father and mother, parental 
love must become household love, before the 
entire family is enrobed in love and the bond 
of unity is made secure. For what is the true 
family but a "congregation of consanguineous 

293 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

individuals, bound together in unity by the 
sacred ties of love, each living to serve the 
other that none may want" ? 

But the family, ideally conceived, prefigures 
the ultimate ideal of the communitv, of the 
state, of the nation, of the world, when all 
members of humanity shall mutually function 
in harmonious relations, each performing his 
just and worthy duty toward all. Ideal so- 
ciety will but be approached when true family- 
hood becomes voluntary familyhood, founded 
only on the principle of mutual affection and 
mutual affinity. 

So the ideal nation will exist when all classes 
and individuals are bound together, not by 
coercion, but voluntarily, through conscious 
unity and mutual good-will. And thus the 
ideal World-state will come into being when 
all nations and races are voluntarily bound to- 
gether, not through fear or force, but mutual 
respect and good- will, growing out of the new 
consciousness of the essential oneness of hu- 
manity as a whole. 

Love, then, as a volitional expression of 
good-will, friendliness and kindliness, is the 

294 



THE PATHWAY OF REALIZATION 

ultimate and perennial power in human life 
from which all others spring. All other 
forces are ephemeral, love alone is final and 
eternal. Love is life, and life is God, and 
God is love, and thus the circle is complete. 
To all who have grasped this identity of life 
and love, the experience of love becomes the 
experience of God, for God is love. Substi- 
tute the word love for the name God; then to 
know love is to know God. To love is to be 
conscious of Reality. Love is the universal, 
realized in the particular. Love is the real and 
only Presence. Love is All. 

In its human expressions, love is not so much 
one passion among others; it is the immortal 
aspect of a man emerging from his hidden 
depths into consciousness ; it is man's true Self 
coming into being. When a man loves, and 
only then, he is living his life on the universal 
and eternal plane; and in just the degree that 
he surrenders his life to love's power, in just 
that degree is he living out his true and divine 
Self, for the deepest essence of that Self is 
always love. The love-life is the eternal life, 
for it is literally God's life finding expression 

295 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

through the individual. He who loves, there- 
fore, knows himself as one with God in that 
experience, and so is conscious of his true unity 
with All-that-is. Love is God coming to con- 
sciousness in man. In loving, man becomes 
most truly God. 

The love-consciousness is the "I am" con- 
sciousness. Love is the self-existent life in 
man. It is a kind of cosmic egoism. We 
catch hints of this truth when, in moments of 
love-rapture, whether for a person or a cause, 
we lose all consciousness of locality or of 
boundaries. We are not conscious in such mo- 
ments of here and there; we just are. It is 
not due to emptiness but to fulness. We are 
conscious of being neither here nor there, not 
because we are nowhere, but because we are 
everywhere, and all the star-peopled spaces 
seem to be within us. We say that we are 
"carried out of ourselves"; it would be more 
accurate to say that in such moments there is 
nothing that is outside of us, that we are car- 
ried deeper into our true or cosmic Selves ; for 
all barriers and boundaries have been removed 
and we know ourselves as one with All. 

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THE PATHWAY OF REALIZATION 

Love, then, is the deepest essence and the 
ultimate meaning of everything. It is not a 
part of life, it is the only real life. It is not 
a mere sentiment, it is truth. It is not the 
source of joy, it is the only true joy. It is not 
something in consciousness, it is the perfection 
of consciousness. Love is the white light of 
pure consciousness that emanates in us from 
God. 

When we examine more closely some of the 
deep revelations that come through the love- 
experiences of human life, we realize that Love 
is indeed the mightiest power knocking at the 
door of the inner life, in order that the true 
Self may come forth in all its glory. 

Love has always been the greatest awaken- 
ing power in the life of man. In all the long 
years of his unfolding, and amid the multitude 
of voices that have called him to thought and 
feeling and action, no voice has ever had such 
potency as the voice of love ; nor has any other 
appeal sounded in his soul so all-compelling a 
note. He has been called to worship, to voice 
the language of beauty, to philosophize on 
life's mysteries, to investigate life's hidden 

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SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

secrets ; but the one voice in all these activities 
that has pierced his soul, and made him the 
master artist, scientist, philosopher or seeker 
after God, has ever been the voice of the mas- 
ter-passion of life. 

"For Love is the creative force in life, sum- 
moning the soul into earthly being from one 
knows not what incalculable distance of space ; 
cherishing it while it neither understands itself 
nor the body which houses it; surrounding it 
with all manner of influences which appeal to 
the highest in it; evoking its latent nobleness; 
teaching it the great lessons of life, the wisdom 
to know to what voices to respond and to what 
to turn a deaf ear." 

Love is also true insight. Among the an- 
cient maxims whose roots lie in confusion of 
thought, none is more misleading than the well- 
worn aphorism that love is blind. If love were 
blind, life would soon sink into chaos ; for love 
is the force that creates, the power that sus- 
tains, the principle that governs; for God is 
love. It is the love of his art that draws the 
painter, the poet, the musician into the very 
heart of his art and makes his passion one with 

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THE PATHWAY OF REALIZATION 

insight; so that he sees and hears where the 
rest of us are only blind and deaf. It is love 
for truth that leads the prophet to utter his 
message, unweariedly, in the face of hostile op- 
position or blank indifference ; but only a later 
age recognizes the truth and knows the prophet 
as such. It is love for righteousness that leads 
the reformer to hurl himself against the deep- 
seated traditional conventions of society; but 
only subsequent generations rise up to call him 
"blessed." To him only who loves with an 
all-consuming passion is the final veil lifted 
and the ultimate insight given ; for at the heart 
of things, knowledge and love are one. 

In its profoundest aspect, Love is union. 
The fundamental aim of love is non-differen- 
tiation, — absolute union of being. Sex is the 
allegory of love in the physical world, and the 
aim of sex is always union, — but on the physi- 
cal plane. What is the meaning contained in 
love's effort toward union from lowest to high- 
est planes? To quote from Mr. H. G. Wells: 
"I think that the desire to partake, the desire 
to merge one's identity with another's remains 
a necessary element in all personal love. It 

299 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

is a way out of ourselves, a breaking down of 
our individual separation, just as hatred is an 
intensification of that. We cast aside our 
reserves, our secrecies, our defenses; we open 
ourselves; touches that would be intolerable 
from common people become a mystery of de- 
light; acts of self-abasement and self-sacrifice 
are charged with symbolical pleasure. We 
cannot tell which of us is me, which you. Our 
imprisoned egoism looks out through this win- 
dow, forgets its walls, and is for those brief 
moments released and universal." 

All religions, through the teachings of love 
by their great prophets and leaders, but es- 
pecially Christianity as construed by Jesus in 
terms of love alone, have thus made explicit in 
their ideals, what we find to be implicit in the 
universe and in life, — the principle of love as 
the great law of individual life and the ulti- 
mate foundation of a world-society. 

Religion has always been the strongest ideal 
force in the life of mankind, and yet, let us 
admit it frankly, it is just here that all relig- 
ions have most conspicuously failed: they have 
never yet either taught or practised their 

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THE PATHWAY OF REALIZATION 

supreme ide'al so as to make love the dominat- 
ing social principle. The failure of Christian- 
ity is most marked because in no other religion 
has the Love-principle held so supreme or ex- 
clusively comprehensive a place as in the teach- 
ings of Jesus. 

It takes no particular insight to discover 
that the trouble with the world to-day, the pri- 
mary cause of all its tragic disunity, lies in the 
fact that we do not believe in love, the love 
that is friendliness and good-will toward all. 
Even the churches do not believe in love, as 
evidenced by the public utterances of promi- 
nent divines. We believe in almost everything 
else, but not in love. We believe in force and 
imprisonment, in fear and hate, in ill-will and 
persecution; but we are afraid to believe in 
love and in the Kingdom of love. We do not 
dare to treat men in a friendly spirit. We are 
filled with all manner of distrusts and sus- 
picions of our fellows. We are afraid to try 
the method of Jesus. We have no faith in his 
ideals. We make a mockery of his religion. 
We crucify him afresh. 

But we shall never find that unity we seek 

301 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

until we learn how to love our fellows as our- 
selves, because they are ourselves. We shall 
never find unity in religion until we begin to 
love a little more those who differ from us. 
We shall never achieve a real unity in society 
until good-will for all classes and individuals 
comes to possess us utterly. We shall never 
build the new world until kindliness shall char- 
acterize our attitude toward all nations and 
races, even those whom we have called enemies, 
remembering that they are all one with us in 
the living body of humanity. It is on the love- 
plane of consciousness that unity alone can be 
found. 

In this great crisis of the world's history, all 
thoughtful men and women realize that in the 
reconstruction of human life that is now going 
on, there must be a broader, deeper recognition 
of love, not as a sentiment or a prophecy, but 
as the only true social principle that is at last 
capable of realization; that peace will never 
come upon earth until there appears a genera- 
tion of men of good-will and friendliness, who 
have risen above all narrow and selfish indi- 
vidualism, in their own lives and also in their 

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THE PATHWAY OF REALIZATION 

lives as patriots, willing and ready to dedicate 
themselves to that higher internationalism that 
is to be. 

As Swami Vivekananda has truly said: 
"Hatred proceeds from imperfect knowledge, 
which makes us perceive objects as separate 
from one another. But when we see our true 
Self in others, how can we hate another with- 
out hating our self? It would be impossible 
for self to hate self. Where true Self-knowl- 
edge is, there can remain no feeling of hatred. 
He who realizes all beings in the Self never 
hates anything or any being. When hatred is 
gone, jealousy and all selfish feelings which we 
call wicked disappear. What remains? The 
ordinary love which stands in opposition to 
hatred vanishes, but divine love begins to reign 
in the heart. True love means the expression 
of oneness. If we see our true Self in others, 
we cannot help loving them as we love our 
Self. Now we understand the meaning of, 
'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' " 

The oldest philosophy of man has always 
taught this truth. When all beings appear 
as parts of one Universal Self, there is no 

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SPIRIT OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

longer delusion, or fear, or sorrow. Sorrow 
and fear arise so long as there is the sense of 
duality and separateness. In Oneness, how- 
ever, there cannot remain fear, sorrow, suffer- 
ing, separation or self-delusion. This is the 
result of true Self-knowledge. 

"Know thyself," and the surface self van- 
ishes and all selfishness is destroyed. The 
deeper Self emerges and all unselfishness is at- 
tained. Herein lies both the ideal and also the 
explanation of true morality. Jesus says, 
"Love your neighbor as yourself"; and the 
reason for this supreme injunction is because 
your neighbor is yourself. 

Every love of our lives, whether it be love 
for persons, or for truth, or for righteousness, 
or for humanity, or for God, is the true saviour 
sent to lead us out of the narrow kingdom of 
self into the universal kingdom of love. God 
is love. To love God, then, is to love Love 
with a mighty all-consuming passion. Love 
is all, is life, is God. 

No man has ever had imagination enough to 
exaggerate the greatness of love. No one has 
ever yet begun to exhaust his powers of lov- 

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THE PATHWAY OF REALIZATION 

ing. No one has ever yet dreamed how great 
his love might become. If men would dare to 
believe in love and good-will as the mightiest 
forces in human life, in the presence of which 
armies and navies are insignificant and help- 
less, if they would begin at last to take Jesus 
seriously, and honestly attempt to translate his 
great ideals into living terms for all men, then 
indeed the new spirit of unity would come 
welling up in the consciousness of humanity in 
response to Love's imperious call, and the new 
world would be fashioned by the men and 
women who had found themselves in union with 
All. 



THE END 



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